RCMP oversight body probes manhunt

Inquiry focused on how police handled suspects’ information after killings

Nearly a year after two teenage murder suspects were found dead in the Manitoba brush, the RCMP’s oversight body is reviewing a complaint over how the national police force handled the high-profile manhunt.

The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, an independent body that reviews the RCMP’s internal investigations into complaints, has to decide whether the Mounties have done enough to respond to concerns raised about the investigation into the deaths of Chynna Deese, Lucas Fowler and Leonard Dyck in northern B.C. last fall.

Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, were charged with the death of Dyck, and were suspects in the deaths of couple Fowler and Deese. All the victims were killed in northern B.C. before the two suspects fled across the country to the remote community of

Gillam, Man., where they shot themselves in the wilderness.

Nine months later, Schmegelsky’s father, Alan Schmegelsky, raised a complaint with the RCMP over their handling of the $1.5-million search.

At the heart of the complaint is whether the force failed to properly inform and keep contact with the elder Schmegelsky while it was going on.

Schmegelsky’s official complaint claims he should have learned about key aspects of the investigation directly through the police, not the media, despite the fact that he was not Bryer’s primary caregiver.

Schmegelsky also alleged the RCMP violated his rights by requiring him to sign a nondisclosure agreement before viewing a video the suspects made before their deaths.

“I don’t want this to happen again … I don’t want any father to find out his son is missing through the media; I don’t want any father to find out his son is dead from the media,” Schmegelsky is quoted as saying in an official complaint made to the commission.

According to a June letter sent to Schmegelsky, an RCMP officer appointed to investigate the complaint had finished his report, which is being reviewed by the commission in Ottawa.

But whatever the report concludes, the commission will be limited in how it can respond.

Krista Stelkia, a researcher in the area of police oversight at Simon Fraser University, said in a previous interview that the commission will decide whether it believes the RCMP’s internal investigation into the complaint was adequate. If it determines it was not adequate, the commission will then write up its own report, which will be delivered to the RCMP commissioner.

“With all that being said, it is important to emphasize that one of the biggest criticisms of the CRCC is the lack of enforcement power it has been given,” Stelkia told the Star in an email. “The CRCC has no legislative power to impose discipline or to influence the disciplinary process and can merely only make recommendations to the RCMP commissioner.”

Another major criticism is that most of the complaints received by the commission are only investigated internally by the RCMP, Stelkia wrote. The exceptions are public interest investigations initiated by the commission, such as the investigation into the death of Colten Boushie, a young Indigenous man who was shot and killed on a Saskatchewan farm by farmer Gerald Stanley, who was acquitted. Manitoba RCMP spent about $800,000 during the 17-day search through the province’s northern terrain. B.C. RCMP estimated their costs at about $750,000.

Those costs include the major crime investigation and specialized support services such as air services and forensic identification.

They do not include the cost of the Canadian Armed Forces, whose members were also involved in the nationwide search.

The RCMP told the Star last week that the investigation into McLeod and Schmegelsky is “essentially complete” and that the only tasks remaining on the file are “mainly administrative.”