RCMP officers should not be allowed to investigate their fellow Mounties for serious offences, because such a system fails to inspire confidence in the investigative process and raises conflict of interest questions, concludes a new report from the RCMP watchdog
CTV.ca News Staff
The Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP has concluded that the Mounties' current strategy of having police investigate police for cases involving sexual assault, serious injury, or death, is "flawed and inconsistent" and needs to be updated and improved.
CPC chair Paul Kennedy told CTV News Channel "there were significant . . . problems in management that would give rise to the perception of a conflict of interest."
During a 19-month-long investigation, the results of which were released Tuesday, the CPC sought to evaluate the following question: "Can the current process of the RCMP investigating itself legitimately engender confidence in the transparency and integrity of the criminal investigation and its outcome?"
According to the CPC, the answer is no, under the current RCMP approach.
In its investigation, the CPC reviewed 28 sample RCMP cases that took place over a five-year period between April 1, 2002 and March 31, 2007. Six of the cases involved deaths.
And while the CPC found "no instances of actual bias by actual members" and that the Mounties acted professionally in all the sample cases, there were some noteworthy problems. Among them:
- Twenty-five per cent of the primary investigators in the sample cases personally knew the officers they were investigating
- A lone investigator was assigned in 60 per cent of the sample cases
- In nearly one-third of the sample cases, the investigating officer was at the same rank or lower rank as the officer he was investigating, leaving open the possibility of intimidation
- There was a "significant disparity" in the level of qualifications of the investigating officers
Kennedy noted the numbers and said "normal citizens are going to say, 'Wait a minute, that looks like a conflict of interest.'"
The CPC has recommended having all RCMP member cases involving death automatically transferred to another criminal investigative body.
In cases involving serious injury or sexual assault, the report recommends that the CPC and a new national registrar decide whether the incident can be handled by the Mounties, or if it should be handed off to another police service. The registrar would be able to decide the best course of action only for less serious criminal matters.
"These are things I've recommended that are doable, practical and should be done, and I think a failure to do it will be to the detriment of the RCMP," he said. "No matter how professional the RCMP is, there will be this lingering doubt about its credibility."
At a news conference in Ottawa, Kennedy spoke about the fact that under current RCMP policy, the Mounties are treated like any other member of the population.
"We disagree strongly with this principle and believe that criminal investigations into RCMP members should not be treated the same as any other investigation," Kennedy said Tuesday morning. "Police are held to a higher standard, requiring a comparative investigative threshold."
The CPC chair also said the lack of any co-ordination into such investigations at a national level is also troubling.
"Without tracking its member investigations, the RCMP has no understanding of what the scope of the problem actually is," Kennedy said Tuesday morning. "And without this knowledge, they cannot begin to address it."
The interim report from the CPC was not well received by RCMP Commissioner William Elliott last month.
In a letter, Elliott called the report's language "unduly negative," and that a revamp of the RCMP's investigative model "may not be warranted."
Staff. Sgt. Bob Meredith, representing the RCMP staff relations, said the first thing he noted in the report was that there were no individual cases of wrongful behaviour by Mounties investigating their own.
"We do a very good job of investigating everything," he said.
He said that junior officers would not be intimidated by investigating officers more senior in rank.
"There is the possibility of the perception of that, but in reality I don't think that exists," he said. "Our officers are very professional in what they do."
He added that as a labour representative he did not have any issue with outside police forces investigating the RCMP.
"We have nothing to hide from someone from the outside."
With files from The Canadian Press
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