Policing the Police: Final Lecture
1) Common Law Standard/Threshold for Police discretion: Police should be given “latitude” when exercising discretion and judgment in difficult or fluid circumstances.
2) Outside of the common law, who polices the police?
The civilian oversight of police is crucial for holding police accountable when police break the law or otherwise engage in wrongdoing.
3) What counts as police misconduct?
In Ontario, police officers and chiefs of police must abide by the Code of Conduct. Failure to do so can result in misconduct proceedings.
The Code of Conduct sets out several types of misconduct:
Discreditable conduct.
Insubordination
Neglect of duty.
Deceit.
Breach of Confidence.
Corrupt practices.
Unlawful or unnecessary exercise of authority.
Damage to clothing or equipment.
Consuming drugs or alcohol in a manner prejudicial to duty.
4) What is civilian oversight of the police?
The definition of oversight is broad: it includes Canadian courts (common law rules specific to discretion and tort law specific to damages. ) It could also include politicians (drafting of legislation) and even the media. The Toronto Star, for example, is consistently investigating racial bias in Toronto’s police service.
Two types of civilian-led oversight mechanisms. The first type receives complaints from the public concerning a police officer’s non-criminal misconduct. The second type investigates police officers whose actions led to the serious injury or death of an individual and police officers who have allegedly broken the law.
5) How does civilian oversight of the police work?
All provincial governments have the authority to enact their own version of a public complaint process and an investigative agency in their province.
Each investigative agencies operate differently.
6) Why do we need civilian oversight of police?
One major argument in favour of civilian oversight is its role in two important aims: ensuring public confidence in the police and achieving the rule of law.
Civilian oversight of police can meet these twin aims since it helps ensure complaints and investigations regarding the police are handled impartially.
7) What criticisms does civilian oversight face?
One common criticism is that civilian oversight mechanisms are not immune from the bias that police forces face when they self-investigate. For example, Ontario’s’ civilian-led investigative agency was criticized for not being fully independent from the police since its investigators are drawn from police forces across the province
8) Police and Racial Bias
Data taken directly from the OHRC and Wortley Report on Policing Bias
The OHRC observed several themes related to the TPS and Black civilians, including the fact that the SIU stated in a number of cases that there was:
A lack of legal basis for police stopping and/or detaining the civilian at the beginning of the encounter
Police conducting inappropriate or unjustified searches of the civilian during the encounter
Police laying charges against the civilian that are without merit
A lack of cooperation by police during the investigation by the SIU.
Police officers are cleared of wrongdoing in over 95% of all SIU investigations involving the Toronto Police Service. Only a small minority of cases result in charges against subject officers. Investigation outcomes do not vary significantly by civilian race
The cause of Black over-representation in police use of force statistics, of course, is subject to interpretation and debate.
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