Given the fact his replacement is a former Conservative organizer with no criminal law or police experience, it is refreshing to see Paul Kennedy, former chair of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, can claim success after his ouster.
RCMP Commissioner William Elliott announced Thursday that the force will no longer be able to investigate itself in cases involving serious injury or death of suspects in police custody. All cases must now be referred to outside police forces or, in the cases of Alberta and Ontario, provincial review agencies. In cases where no outside unit is available, such as small detachments in Canada’s north, investigating officers must outrank the Mountie under suspicion and be screened for any potential conflict of interest.
Getting the RCMP to stop investigating its own members was one of Kennedy’s strongest crusades up until his contract expired at the end of 2009 and was not renewed by the Conservative government. A report he issued last summer showed 68 per cent of cases where the RCMP investigated its own members were tainted with some hint of impropriety. The investigation of the four officers involved in the death of Robert Dziekanski catapulted the issue into the public conscience, even as Elliott dismissed Kennedy’s call for outside agencies to investigate potential Mountie misconduct.
Elliott’s reversal is a no-brainer that should have come sooner. It might have been his announcement, but it was Kennedy’s work that made it happen. In law enforcement, policing the police requires transparency, especially in the public’s eye. Any apprehension of impropriety breaches the public trust. Elliott’s mea culpa and Kennedy’s work should help rebuild some of that.
