Police board chair defends suspension practices
Despite a call from the police union to “intervene to preserve confidence in the leadership of the Ottawa Police Service,” there is nothing to be done about complaints about inconsistencies in when officers are suspended because the law allows for it, the head of the police board says.
In an op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen this week, Ottawa Police Association president Matt Skof called for the board to intervene after Chief Charles Bordeleau refused to suspend or reassign senior police officials implicated in what is now a criminal investigation being conducted by Ontario Provincial Police. It reeked of a double-standard, he said.
“Bordeleau has shown a zeal for imposing suspensions or administrative transfers on rank-and-file officers,” Skof wrote. “Many were imposed on the basis of mere allegations, others on the thinnest of evidence, well before investigations were commenced.”
Bordeleau declined to comment on the op-ed or its content.
Skof told the Citizen that Bordeleau’s failure to suspend was creating a “culture of fear and intimidation” where rank-and-file officers were observing senior officers acting with “impunity.”
Police board chair Coun. Eli El Chantiry agreed that “there’s no consistency” in how officers are suspended, but that is, by nature, the letter of the law.
Section 89 of the Police Services Act gives chiefs of police both the authority but also the discretion to suspend officers from duty with pay if they are “suspected of or charged with an offence under a law of Canada or of a province or territory or is suspected of misconduct.”
The next subsection actually gives boards the same authority and discretion to suspend a chief or deputy chief suspected or charged with the same.
The practice is for chiefs to look at each case and determine what to do, based on a set of criteria, and that’s what the chief’s job should be, El-Chantiry said. It will result in some officers being suspended or reassigned immediately, others later, some never at all.
El-Chantiry said the board will request to be briefed on how suspensions and reassignments are decided, but that discussion will happen in-camera because it would likely involve disclosing the identities of officers who have been suspended or situations where suspension was contemplated.
The Citizen first reported the allegations against several senior police employees last week after defence lawyer Michael Edelson sent letters to Bordeleau and two provincial cabinet ministers outlining the allegations against senior police employees.
The letter detailed legal disclosure the lawyer received while defending then-acting Staff Sgt. Marty Rukavina, who — along with constables Serge Clement and Carl Grimard — had been charged by the Special Investigations Unit after a tactical training explosion in Kanata that injured two officers and three paramedics in the summer of 2014.
The charges against Rukavina and the other officers were ultimately stayed, but disclosure of evidence provided to Edelson and two other lawyers is alleged to have shown that evidence in the case was changed by the force’s legal counsel and also that some senior officers gave false statements during the SIU’s investigation.
The alleged evidence manipulation could have mitigated the force’s civil and labour liability, suggesting instead rogue officers on the day of the explosion weren’t following force policy or previous practices. But as a criminal investigation was underway, it could have also made sacrificial lambs of the accused tactical officers.
In the op-ed, Skof also characterized the implicated senior police personnel as “advisers” to the chief who belong to his “inner circle.” He also charged that the allegations against them were long known by Bordeleau.
El-Chantiry said the OPP’s investigation is expected to also probe any impropriety in how the allegations were handled.
“The OPP, hopefully, with their investigation, can shed some light on it,” he said. syogaretnam@postmedia.com twitter.com/shaaminiwhy