Seventy-seven people have died in police persecution over a 10-year period in Canada, according to a study by an independent NGO.
The study, published through the Federal Access to Information Act, analyzed 871 harassments involving the RCMP and other police forces across the country. He found that employees were injured in seven percent of the harassment surveyed by researchers.
Drivers and passengers in running vehicles were injured in 23 percent of the prosecutions, while innocent people were injured in 10 percent of the cases.
“The decision to start, join or end the pursuit is calculated and sensitive to the time taken by front-line police officers,” the study said. “Discretion of an employee can potentially have consequences for one’s own and public safety.
As of September 2021, the hitherto unpublished study of the RCMP’s Civil Review and Complaints Commission covers the 10-year period ending in 2019 and is based on media reports.
Persecutions that failed to lead to the news are not included.
“The RCMP recognizes that police harassment can pose a threat to public and police safety,” said Robin Percival, a spokesman for the RCMP headquarters in Ottawa.
In 2021, the RCMP reviewed its emergency vehicle policy to determine that Mounties can only initiate or continue a vehicle chase if they reasonably believe that the suspect has committed (or intends to commit) a serious act of violence – and only failure to detain the suspect immediately would pose a greater risk to public safety than persecution.
The old policy is that an RCMP officer can start a chase when a suspected driver refuses to stop for a police officer and tries to avoid detention. The policy does not require officers to prosecute drivers just to try to avoid arrest, and said prosecutions should be reviewed in cases where the driver can be identified and detained at another time.
The new policy also requires all RCMP front-line members to successfully complete an updated online course on emergency vehicle operations. In the past, only supervisors were required to take the course.
Each module of the course contains script-based training to provide RCMP staff with real-life examples they may encounter in the course of their duties, Percival said.
RCMP says use of planes is “significant cost”
The study says air chases – helicopters, drones or fixed-wing planes – are a safer and more effective option for ground chases. They are also more expensive.
One of the main advantages of using air support is that it allows the police to safely and effectively monitor the movements of suspects from a distance, as it helps tactical units on the ground, thus reducing direct interaction between fleeing suspects, pursuing units and the public. “The study said.
An RCMP helicopter flies over Parliament Hill. A recent report says that air chases are a much safer and more effective alternative to ground chases, although they cost more. (Justin Tang / Canadian Press)
Of the 114 air chases analyzed in the study, only three ended without anyone being detained. Police in charge of air chases typically use infrared cameras to track the thermal signatures of suspects fleeing their vehicles and hiding.
Alberta accounts for 38% of these 114 air chases, while 23% occurred in British Columbia and 22% occurred in Ontario.
The RCMP was involved in 57% of the air chases and 52% of the spike incidents studied in the study. In 2019, 26% of 67,618 police officers in Canada were in the force, according to Statistics Canada.
Percival said that while air pursuits are effective, “planes are a significant cost” and further investment “must be balanced with other priorities”.
Among agencies outside the RCMP, the Winnipeg Police Flight Unit participated in 101 vehicle pursuits in 2020, according to its annual report. In 2020, the air support department of the Saskatoon Police Department played an important role in the arrest of 251 suspects, which is 22% more than in 2019.
Spikes used in about a quarter of cases: report
The study also found that in almost a quarter of police harassment, suspected drivers collided with (or tried to collide with) police vehicles.
Spiked belts are used in 25% of cases – which often involve stolen vehicles – and are successful in nearly two-thirds of these cases. Stolen pickups were the most common vehicle involved in the chase, and the fleeing suspects were predominantly men.
Ontario and Alberta account for 24% of all pursuits, including spiked belts. Just over half of all spiked cases were related to RCMP.
Persecution officers often used extra force to detain suspects, such as police dogs, batons, tasers and firearms.
“Although the use of spiked belts is encouraged as a means of detaining a suspect, representative data do not show a significant reduction in the risk to public safety and the safety of employees,” the study found.
RCMP officers inspect a spiked belt in front of a crashed vehicle. (Jeff Mackintosh / Canadian Press)
The Ontario Police Services Act has a regulation on police harassment that requires officers to weigh the gravity of the crime – the need to apprehend a suspect – against the risk to public safety.
Ontario Police spokesman Bill Dixon said the prosecution was “a last resort” and was considered “only when other alternatives are not available or unsatisfactory.”
During the prosecution, he said, officers “must constantly assess whether the risk to public safety in the pursuit outweighs the risk to public safety if the suspect is not apprehended immediately.”
The OPP officer pleaded guilty to negligent driving
All harassment is being monitored by a supervisor, Dixon added. And while the officer involved in the chase can end it at any time, the supervising sergeant “has the ultimate responsibility for making decisions,” he said.
OPP Const. Timothy Groves pleaded guilty to reckless driving and was fined $ 2,500 on December 22, 2020, at the Provincial Criminal Court in London, Ont., In connection with police harassment. The more serious criminal charges – two charges of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle with causing bodily harm and one charge of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle – were dropped.
Porsche Clark, then 28, and her daughter Skyla – 9 at the time – were seriously injured on July 28, 2019, when the taxi they were in was hit by a Groves police vehicle while he was chasing two bank robbery suspects.
Porsche Clark, then 28, and her nine-year-old daughter Skyla were seriously injured on July 28, 2019, when the taxi they were in was hit by a police vehicle chasing two suspects in a bank robbery.
Kevin Egan, a personal injury lawyer representing Clark, said he believed the OPP’s harassment policy was adequate as long as officials complied.
“This requires a constant assessment of the risk reward,” he said.
Complicating matters, police harassment can overlap with a number of police jurisdictions, requiring officers and supervisors from different police departments to continually assess the risk of continuing the harassment.
In Clark’s case, the high-speed chase began with Sarnia Police Department, was taken over by the provincial police and eventually came under the jurisdiction of the London Police Department.
The lawsuit, filed by Clarks in the Ontario Supreme Court in July 2021, describes a pursuit that has reached a speed of at least 180 kmh. The statement said belt spikes were unfolded twice during the chase – without success – that the suspect’s vehicle fled from police and its driver ignored a police officer who pointed a gun at him, and that an OPP vehicle collided. with another car containing a family that leads to injuries.
Egan said no civil defense had been filed and expected the matter to be resolved out of court.
The Clark family is seeking $ 13 million in damages.
High stakes solution
The statement said Porsche Clark had suffered a number of serious injuries, including a broken neck, collapsed lungs, a fractured spine and a brain injury. The statement said that her daughter had experienced “internal decapitation, ligament separation of the spine from the base of the skull.”
Egan said he was still amazed that none of his clients had been killed. He said that the fact that Skyla “can now walk alone and breathe without a probe and can eat” is an absolute miracle.
The Police Prosecution Study concludes that there is a lack of “publicly available, standardized and comprehensive data collection and reporting” for police persecution in Canada and calls for more comprehensive research.
Neil Boyd, a professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, said a police officer’s decision to prosecute or overturn a suspect could be as important as deciding to use a gun.
“It’s not exactly a deadly shooting, but it’s a very similar decision,” he said.
Boyd said that while the study “raises interesting questions”, he would like to know more about the individual circumstances of the study and the appropriateness of police action.
“It depends on what the bad guy did and what the threat to the community is,” he said. “We need more details.”
Add Comment