Watchdog fight
A territorial spat between the Toronto Police Service and two oversight agencies threatens to delay or derail an investigation into brutality allegations. This will not do much for public confidence in policing.
In July, a man named Tyrone Phillips was arrested in Toronto outside a nightclub. He ended up in the hospital, diagnosed with a concussion, and filed a complaint with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD), which manages complaints against police. He alleged he’d been beaten unconscious during the arrest.
This is a serious matter — serious enough that it triggered an investigation by the Special Investigations Unit (SIU).
On Jan. 2, the SIU announced it was closing the investigation — because neither the Toronto police nor the OIPRD would hand over a copy of the original complaint. This suggests the police-accountability mechanism in Ontario can be shut down by nothing more than an officious attitude toward paperwork. The Toronto police say the document belongs to the OIPRD, so only the OIPRD can hand it to the SIU. The OIPRD says its policy is to only share information with the affected police service — the Toronto police in this case.
Phillips consented to the document’s release; there was never a question of protecting his privacy.
SIU director Ian Scott said in a statement that the refusal to hand over the document “may be a breach of Toronto Police Service’s duty to fully co-operate with the Unit.”
The Toronto Police Service responded with, “Director Scott is wrong. The document in question belongs to the Office of the Independent Police Review Director. We are not allowed to release a document which belongs to someone else without their express permission.”
To which any reasonable human being would respond: So get the express permission. It’s 2013. Dial up a three-way-conference call. Send an email.
Since closing the investigation, the SIU has reportedly been making headway in getting the OIPRD to release the document. But if this is what investigators have to go through just to get the facts, it’s hard to have confidence in the police or the institutions that are supposed to be watching them.