The system, not the law, failed in the Pierzchala tragedy
Genuine anguish and political posturing arising from the slaying of OPP Const. Greg Pierzchala have led to calls to change bail laws. The law is the wrong place to look. The failure lies elsewhere.
One of the persons charged with the killing, Randall McKenzie, was on restrictive terms of bail at the time.
The terms included that he wear a GPS monitor, report to police twice a week and stay in the home of his surety, who was the person responsible for him complying with all terms of bail. If GPS monitoring was effective, if the police appreciated the importance of McKenzie reporting to them and if the surety acted in accordance with his or her duty to supervise, the chance of him committing a serious crime while on bail would have been small. However, those well-considered terms of bail either were not implemented or were not enforced properly.
The Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General conducts GPS monitoring and enforcement through the services of a private company. In the normal course, the company through its monitoring system would detect both tampering with the GPS ankle bracelet and whether the person wearing the ankle bracelet was not where his conditions of bail required him to be.
Once the monitoring system detected McKenzie’s failure to reside with his surety, the police would have been notified. The police could have arrested McKenzie for that breach, as they could have if he failed to report to the police or if the surety reported to them that he was not complying with any one of the bail terms.
Details of the GPS monitoring of McKenzie and the action or inaction of the police and the surety regarding the enforcement of bail terms are not available in news reports.
In addition to breaches of bail terms, there was another incident that gave the police the power to arrest. In August 2022, months before Const. Pierzchala was killed, McKenzie failed to appear in court in Hamilton. That is a separate criminal offence and Hamilton police could have arrested McKenzie for it.
The Hamilton Police Service has a Bail Compliance Unit which, according to the HPS website, “identifies and manages violent offenders through bail compliance checks and limits offenders’ opportunities to reoffend.” According to a report submitted in 2019 to the Hamilton Police Services Board, “(members of the Bail Compliance Unit) will actively search for and arrest those offenders who are breaching court imposed conditions.” In addition, from April to October 2022, the Hamilton Police Service was carrying out “Project Kora,” which led to the arrest of 348 people wanted on outstanding charges. The man now charged with the slaying of Const. Pierzchala was not one of them.
The problem here is not with the law, the judge who released the accused person or the terms of bail imposed. The fault must lie with one or more of the persons responsible for ensuring that McKenzie complied with bail terms. It is not clear from news reports which of them it was, but it is certain someone failed to do his job or did it badly.
There will not be an inquest into the death of Const. Pierzchala. The criminal trial will deal with proof of murder and not the terms of bail the alleged killer breached. It is up to the Solicitor General, the Hamilton Police Services Board and the chief of police to determine what went wrong and to set things right.
Now that the cruel death of Const. Pierzchala is no longer in the news cycle, I question whether any of them feel compelled to do so.