Watchdog agency to investigate shooting

In the hours following Montreal police fatally shooting a man in the Gay Village Tuesday night, 12 investigators from Quebec’s Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes (BEI) were dispatched to try to establish exactly what happened.

The incident marked the 10th time the BEI has had to investigate an intervention by the Montreal police since the police watchdog agency was established last June. The BEI conducts independent investigations when a person is killed, suffers serious injuries or is shot by an officer during an intervention or while in police custody.

The BEI came about as a result of years of calls for a better system to be in place to investigate scenarios in which people are killed or injured by police. The previous protocol called for an outside police force to investigate police interventions in such situations. In Montreal, the Sûreté du Québec would step in to investigate incidents involving SPVM officers. The SPVM would often do the same when incidents took place outside its jurisdiction.

After a string of fatal police interventions failed to result in charges for the officers involved, critics argued police officers shouldn’t investigate other police officers.

But a year after being implemented, the provincial agency isn’t without its doubters. Civil rights organizations have already decried its lack of transparency and questioned whether it actually is independent, given the number of former police officers working as investigators.

In a statement released this week, the BEI said it conducted a total of 62 investigations across the province in its first year of operations. Of those, 49 were independent probes of events involving police officers in which someone was killed or injured and 13 concerned allegations of sexual misconduct committed by officers. It has handed over seven of its investigations to Quebec’s Crown prosecutor’s office. None of those has resulted in charges yet.

As for being independent, the BEI said that after hires made throughout its first year, it now employs 13 people who are former police officers and 13 who have never worked for a police force.