Time to speed up SIU reports

When police kill or seriously injure someone it’s imperative that a spotlight is shone on the incident, a thorough investigation is completed by an independent watchdog, and a detailed report is released to the public.

As of last week, the third of those elements of transparency is finally on the way in Ontario. That’s when Attorney General Yasir Naqvi promised to immediately make public all Special Investigations Unit reports in cases where no officer faces charges. He did so in response to a recommendation in a robust report on police oversight by Justice Michael Tulloch released this month.

That’s an important step, but it’s still not enough. It’s also important that investigations be completed in a timely manner so there is closure for victims’ families, the police officers involved and the public. After all, justice delayed is justice denied.

Alarmingly, however, that is not currently the case in Ontario. As the Star’s Wendy Gillis reports, for the second year in a row the SIU fell far short of its own performance standard for closing its investigations.

According to the agency’s annual report, which itself was delivered nine months late, just 28 per cent of cases closed by the SIU in 2015 were completed within 30 business days.

That’s down from the 33 per cent closed in that time frame in 2014. And it is a precipitous drop from the almost three-quarters of cases closed in 30 days in 2012 and 2013. Those were years when the SIU had a comparable or significantly higher new case load than in 2014 and 2015.

This downward spiral in the time it takes to solve cases is troubling. Indeed, the annual report serves to underscore the importance for the province of acting on other recommendations in Tulloch’s report aimed at speeding up the time it takes for the SIU to complete its cases.

Most importantly, Tulloch recommended that the SIU complete its investigations within 120 days. When it cannot do that, he said, it must report to the public at that time and every 60 days thereafter.

That’s a step in the right direction. For the first time, it would set a hard deadline for the SIU to report on its investigations, rather than a simple internal goal of closing cases in 30 days.

Even before Tulloch reported, the SIU had announced it would no longer aim to meet its 30-day goal because of the increasing complexity of the cases it handles. Tulloch’s recommendation that the organization be required to report within 120 days, and then issue regular reports in complicated cases, will give the public much more certainty that it will get timely information.

“Long delays benefit nobody,” Tulloch warned. “They are particularly hard on affected persons and police officers under investigation.”

How can the SIU deliver its findings in a more timely fashion? Tulloch made three recommendations:

Creating a deputy director position to speed up closure rates by easing the workload on the SIU director.

Allowing the SIU to charge an officer with a provincial offence for failure to co-operate with an investigation, to ensure it doesn’t get bogged down.

Making sure that notes prepared by an officer who is the focus of an investigation, before the SIU gets involved in a case, are provided to the unit. That could help speed up investigations.

These are all sensible recommendations. Naqvi should implement them as quickly as possible.

A report from the SIU indicates the police watchdog is not completing cases in a timely manner. They must speed up