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| NEWS > 19 October 2009 |
Other related articles:
UN row over police
A SHOWDOWN is looming between the UN and the East Timor Government over the controversial promotion of two senior police officers.
The 2500-strong East Timor National Police (PNTL) collapsed during last year's political violence but is now being reformed, with more than 1000 former officers being successfully screened for reintegration.
As part of that process, Jorge Monteiro will be promoted to deputy commander of operations and Inspector Delfim Da Silva will be promoted to deputy commander of Dili district.
However, an internal UN memo seen by The Australian appeals ag... Read more
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 Article sourced from
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Toronto Star
19 October 2009
This article appeared in the above title/site.
To view it in its entirity click this link.
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Ethics in Policing
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Canada: New police complaints
Seventeen months past deadline, the Ontario government has finally set up its new police complaints system.
The new Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD), which officially opened its doors to the public Monday, is expected to change the province's approach to investigating complaints against any provincial, regional or municipal police officer in Ontario.
The new system empowers a civilian director to:
Investigate any and all complaints and to decide whether to investigate the complaints themselves.
Leave them in the hands of the police force against which the complaints were filed.
Or, as a third option, forward them for investigation by a different police force located within the province.
The underlying goal is to herald a higher level of police accountability than was available under the previous system in which complaints of police misconduct, racial profiling or abuse were delivered to the very police force being complained against. Internal investigators there could dismiss the complaint without publicly revealing the results of their investigation and sometimes complainants weren't even told if an officer was disciplined.
"I'm pleased that Ontario now has a complaints system that has the confidence and respect of both the public and the police," Attorney General Chris Bentley said as he opened the OIPRD at its Bay Street office Monday morning.
But why did the OIPRD, which is now accepting complaints about any incidents that occurred as of Monday, take so long to get going?
"To do it right we needed to take some time," explains Gerry McNeilly, director of the OIPRD. "My team and I needed to review the legislation. We needed to continue to do what Justice Lesage did - talk to the public, talk to the police to get an understanding of the problems and then to set up an office from the ground up."
Four years ago, Patrick Lesage, the former chief justice of Ontario, declared the province's system for reviewing public complaints against police was "flawed" and required "significant systemic changes."
LeSage recommended 27 changes, chief among them that a civilian police review body be formed.
All provinces, except P.E.I., have a civilian oversight commission to police the police, but none operate autonomously from the police.
The Liberal government incorporated LeSage's recommendations into the Independent Police Review Act, which became law in May 2007. Michael Bryant, then the attorney general, said the new system would be operating by May 2008.
"It's as though they aren't interested in changing this," John Sewell, former mayor of Toronto and head of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, told the Star last year.
He now says the government has, albeit languidly, moved in the right direction.
"There's no question this is a major step forward and a welcome one," he says.
"I just wish they'd implemented this one a lot more quickly."
Sewell, LeSage and McNeilly all recognize that anyone who lodged a complaint prior to Monday is still stuck dealing with the old, flawed system.
In Ontario, the civilian Special Investigations Unit investigates cases of serious injury, death or sexual assault involving police, but it doesn't deal with public complaints. The province had a separate civilian oversight commission for public complaints against police, which was revered by other provinces and countries, until 1997, when it was scrapped by the Mike Harris government to cut costs.
Complaints against police fell by more than 30 per cent after the "flawed" system was introduced, as lawyers began advising clients not to file complaints.
Allan Young, professor of criminal law at Osgoode Hall, likened trying to get accountability under that system to "getting information out of Stalinist Russia."
Lesage says the new system has tracked his 2005 recommendations very closely.
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