Police Fail Accountability Standards: WHOPPER WATCH

 

“Police are more accountable than ever, and yet trust in the police has declined.”

Joanne Laucius, Ottawa Citizen

Actually, that’s not true.

Here’s why.

1. Over the years, the Ottawa Police Services Board, which has limited oversight of the Ottawa Police Service, has had weak leadership and lost its objectivity when dealing with the police;
2. The one recent exception was former Gloucester-Southgate Diane Deans who took the chairwoman’s job seriously, as she always does with her efforts, and treated the board’s independence with respect. Deans was ousted during the Freedom Convoy due to a long-standing animosity between her and former mayor Jim Watson. Former councillor and then police board member Carol Anne Meehan was so concerned about Deans’ treatment that she resigned from the board in disgust;
3. The OPSB has recently tried to limit public participation in its meetings;
4. The Special Investigations Unit which probes real or alleged examples of police wrong-doing is composed largely of people with an affinity for the police and its biases show;
5. The provincial board that oversees complaints by the public concerning relies heavily on the investigations of the police force in question;
6. The OPS professional standards branch is far too close to the officers it investigates. It looks more like an operation that tries to mute public complaints rather than aggressively investigate them;
7. The OPS has refused to reveal what discipline most of the officers received for errors of judgment during the Freedom Convoy protest;
8. The public has seen instances where officers have taken part in questionable conduct (caught by video) and fellow police officers did not intervene;
9. The OPS has not given a full accounting of something so simple as the shooting of a bear that wandered into west-end suburban back yards. Accordingly, one wonders what they leave out in their reports in dealings with two-legged mammals;
10. A police officer is alleged to have planted evidence in a raid. It took a civil case filed against the police to bring this to public attention.

We could go on but we hope you get the picture. The police are a very well-paid and very well-equipped force that acts often like a closed club.

Retired Police Feel The Shame of Others: QUOTABLE

Residents of Ottawa, who expect the rule of law to be enforced and who pay for police, expect much better oversight, conduct and service.

Ken Gray

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