Global Courant 2023-05-02 13:30:00
Police and Public Trust, a project of CBC News Atlantic’s investigative unit, examines the largely banned police grievance and discipline systems across the region. Journalists use access information laws, and in some cases legal proceedings, to obtain disciplinary records and data.
When a complaint is made against a Royal Newfoundland Constabulary police officer, the process almost always takes place behind closed doors.
That’s not unusual. In fact, police complaints are handled that way throughout most of Canada.
As police departments try to maintain public trust, CBC News wanted to know more about what complaints are being made to the RNC and what those results are.
In June 2022, CBC Newfoundland and Labrador filed an information access request with the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary requesting records related to police discipline and copies of the chief’s decisions.
After a successful appeal to the county’s information and privacy commissioner, CBC obtained a ledger of hundreds of public, internal, and criminal complaints against RNC officers, detailing the type of complaint and the outcome of the investigations.
Journalists from the CBC’s Atlantic Research Unit spent weeks cleaning, formatting, analyzing and verifying the data. The chief’s decisions were withheld.
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have filed hundreds of complaints about police misconduct over the past decade, the ledger shows. But the public has never known what happened to most of them until now.
There is a caveat to analyzing all data. The RNC’s material was messy – scattered among the public and internal complaints were accolades and awards for bravery, notes from when officers investigated other police forces, and more. Hundreds of lines of data contain redactions, with police citing an unreasonable invasion of privacy.
And just because a complaint is made doesn’t mean it’s substantive. The data does not show whether the complaint was well-founded or unfounded. This makes it difficult to determine the exact number of well-founded complaints. However, based on information provided on the outcome of each complaint, it appears many have been rejected or withdrawn.
Some grievance matters involve multiple officers and CBC has counted each of these as a unique grievance. For example, a file number can have six different officers, so CBC counted that as six complaints in this case.
The most common complaints
The information spans more than a dozen years, between January 2010 and August 2022, with complaints ranging from an officer not completing his job on time to assault.
However, there are some types of complaints that far outweigh the others, with inappropriate behavior – actions that could discredit the police – sexual assault, incomplete investigation, dereliction of duty and excessive force being at the top of the list.
Inappropriate behavior — behavior that could discredit police — is the most common form of complaint filed against officers of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, between 2010 and August 2022. (CBC News Graphics)
One officer dealt with at least 16 different complaints
One of the reasons CBC News appealed to the privacy commissioner was that the RNC originally refused to provide unique identifiers – a number assigned to each RNC officer – that can be used to analyze whether an officer has been the subject of repeated disciplinary action. measures or complaints.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner sided with the CBC.
The data shows that several officers have been reprimanded for repeated offenses over the course of the past decade.
And that number could be higher. In 276 cases, the RNC refused to provide a unique identifier for the officer involved, citing privacy concerns. Those cases could not be included in the analysis of those experiencing multiple complaints.
One officer faced 16 internal and public complaints – the highest recorded on the ledger. Between 2010 and 2022, the officer faced 14 internal complaints and two public complaints, for a range of charges including dereliction of duty, inappropriate conduct, excessive force and use of corporate credit cards.
Punishments ranged from unpaid suspension to written reprimands. Not all complaints turn out to be well-founded.
The officer with the second most complaints, at age 15, was also suspended without pay for complaints of inappropriate conduct, dereliction of duty and violation of RNC policies. In several cases, including this one, it was noted that the officer resigned before receiving any disciplinary action.
Similarly, an officer with 13 internal and public complaints retired before any action was taken against them.
“Complaint is well founded, but (officer) is retired,” the complaints register noted, in connection with an inappropriate complaint from 2017.
How are complaints handled?
The roadmap to the police discipline process for the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary is complicated, with many stages. (CBC News images)
Critics say the current process of dealing with internal and public complaints against police officers is unnecessarily complicated, secretive and lengthy.
Non-criminal cases involving public complaints about a police officer begin with an investigation by other RNC officers, who then report to the Chief of Police. The supervisor can reject the complaint and deal with it or charge an official internally. A hearing is then held at which disciplinary action, ranging from training to termination, is imposed.
I think the chief constable and the post of chief constable are in a very difficult position to be a champion of the police and represent the police as a proud and noble institution, while also being responsible for discipline of police officers.—Lynn Moore
The process becomes public only if and when the complainant or officer appeals the chief’s decision, and the Public Complaints Commission disagrees with the chief’s decision.
Attorney Lynn Moore, who was charged with handling complaints during her time on the force from 2008 to 2012, says transparency is just one of her concerns in the current process.
“It’s only a very, very small number of cases that actually get published,” Moore said.
“It makes no sense why (the public) isn’t informed every step of the way; if it’s important for people to know about a case where the public complaints commissioner disagrees with the police chief, why is it? not important enough for people to know if she agrees with the police chief?”
On average, there is less than one public hearing per year.
Lynn Moore worked for the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary from 2008 to 2012. She was charged with disciplinary hearings. (Zach Goudie/CBC)
Moore said the chief has a lot of power over the disciplining process and is inherently conflicted.
“I think the chief constable and the position of chief constable are in a very difficult position to be a champion of the police force and to represent the police force as a proud and noble institution, while also being responsible for discipline of police officers,” she said .
“It’s hard for any individual to do both things right, which is why they have civilian oversight of police forces in other places in Canada.”
‘They are almost there as a sign’
Moore also says she is concerned about the lack of rights for complainants. She says they have no representation at the chief’s hearing, while the police officer has.
“They can eventually go to a hearing and the chief is present, the chief’s lawyers are present, the officer is present, the officers’ lawyers are present, and the person filing the complaint is the only person in the room who has no counsel,” said Moore.
“They have no disclosure. They don’t get to see anything about what their complaint resulted in. They have no right to participate meaningfully in the public complaint process. They’re there almost like a token or a decoy (like) they can’t meaningfully Participate.”
The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary has more than 400 police officers and more than 100 civilian employees in multiple detachments across the province. (CBC News images)
Complicating matters, she says, is when a criminal charge is filed at the same time. Any public complaint investigation will be suspended until all criminal proceedings have been fully terminated.
“You can get a 10 or 11 year delay if there is an appeal in a criminal case, and then a new trial and then another appeal. So in the Snelgrove case, for example, Doug Snelgrove is still a police officer because the public complaints process has been paused while the criminal proceedings settle themselves.”
It is not just the public that has encountered problems with the disciplinary process. An independent workplace assessment released in July 2022 by attorney Harriet Lewis outlines the concerns officers have with the current system.
“The requirement for the chief to establish and prepare written decisions for all but the most minor disciplinary matters has led to backlogs and delays in decision-making, leaving the person(s) involved in limbo and often resulting in in reassigning tasks pending a final decision, with the disruption elsewhere that that entails,” Lewis wrote.
“Some members told us they believe discipline and punishment have been applied inconsistently depending on the individuals involved, with certain people being favored or forgiven more than others.”
Lewis wrote that some police officers reported that fear of discipline has led to indecisiveness and a hesitation to use force.
RNC chief Patrick Roche declined an interview with CBC News, and police did not respond to questions within the deadline.
Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador
CBC is investigating. (CBC)
