John Sewell: Hopeful signs police abuses may be addressed

By John Sewell – 

As I sat in the Toronto Police Services Board meeting I was concluding—to my surprise—the board is learning. The board now seems ready to take effective action to look into what the police did during the G20 meeting at the end of June. Many of us thought it would never agree to do this.

Two weeks ago the board seemed to be looking for ways to obfuscate, and cloak itself in a fog of rules that it claimed prevented it from being effective. It relied on the canard that the Police Services Act prevents the board from having any role in the operations of the police service, and that all operational decisions are entirely within the control of the police chief.

The Act says nothing of the sort. It states, “The board shall not direct the chief of police with respect to specific operational decisions or with respect to the day-to-day operations of the police force.”

You can’t argue with that. The last thing you want is for the board telling the chief to arrest a certain person or raid a particular house. But the section does not stop the board from setting operational policy, such as by telling the chief that the force cannot do strips searches except in extraordinary cases, as the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled. And it doesn’t limit the board’s review of decisions made in the past.

Happily, it looks as though the board will agree it has an important role in shaping operational policy, and in reviewing operational decisions. How that happens won’t be entirely clear until the board sets the terms of reference for the review of G20 events and appoints the person to lead the review later this month. At the moment, I’m willing to give the board the benefit of the doubt. It looks like it is learning, and that’s a good thing.

At the same time, the new provincial complaints mechanism, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, has announced that it will be holding its own inquiry into what some have said is systemic abuse of police powers. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, under its very energetic new executive director Natalie des Rosiers, has helped more than 70 individuals who were falsely arrested by police, or otherwise interfered with, to file complaints with the OIRPD, and it is that pressure which led the OIPRD to act. Of course, we still need to know the terms of reference and who will be the inquiry officer for this initiative.

The arbitrary arrests of many demonstrators—most released after 24 hours of incarceration without charges—and the random searching of individuals without warrants are the kinds of things one expects police to do in some third-world dictatorship where there is no Charter of Rights and Freedoms which states that this is wrong. But it is entirely improper in a country like Canada which says it relies on the rule of law. Who gave the orders for these arrests, and why? The refusal of police forces to intervene to stop vandalism by a small group of demonstrators also needs to be explained.

Perhaps both inquiries will come up short on answers to these questions, but I’m willing to be optimistic. That the federal government under Steven Harper refuses to admit there were problems with the policing of the G20 is not unexpected but it is very discouraging. It’s as though the prime minister doesn’t care about what laws the police decide to uphold.