Report: Windsor police undermined civilian watchdog

WINDSOR, Ont. -- Windsor police failed to notify the province’s civilian watchdog agency about a car accident involving a police cruiser that resulted in a serious injury, chief Gary Smith acknowledged Wednesday.

The Windsor Police Service was one of several services in the province mentioned in a scathing report released Wednesday by Ontario’s ombudsman Andre Marin.

Titled Oversight Undermined, the 63-page report found that new legislation is urgently needed to protect the role of the Special Investigations Unit from being “deliberately undermined” by the provincial government.

Since launching the review last spring, Marin says his office has found that officials with the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General have “systemically discouraged” the SIU from going public when officers do not co-operate and continued to dismiss concerns about lawyers vetting police notes before they’re submitted to the agency.

In the report, the ombudsman found the SIU experienced a lack of co-operation from police officers in more than one-third of the 658 cases it investigated the past four years.

During that period, the SIU director wrote 227 times to police chiefs to raise concerns and received only 20 “substantive responses,” said Marin.

In 50 cases, the agency was contacted late or not at all, which police forces are mandated to do under the Police Services Act.

Some of the instances involved civilians having their noses or arms broken, being struck with a Taser four times or bitten by a police dog.

According to the report, the SIU sent a director’s letter to Windsor’s police chief on four occasions.

One letter cited the force’s failure to notify SIU and three letters were over delays in notifying SIU about incidents. SIU also raised the issue of an officer’s conduct in one of those letters.

The report shows the chief did not respond to any of the letters.

“I don’t recall (the letters) asking for a response,” Windsor police Chief Gary Smith said.

“I’ll look at each letter individually. I always consider whether I’m going to respond or not, but I’ve seen nothing that jumps out at me that requires a response.”

Sources say the incident in which Windsor police failed to notify SIU involved a car accident between a police vehicle and civilian car.

Smith said he’s unsure of the incident, but suspects it relates to a woman who was involved in an accident but “didn’t complain of any injuries” until two weeks after the crash when she called the SIU.

“I think she had a broken wrist or broken bones in the back of her hand,” said Smith, who can only recall the incident took place “well over a year ago.”

Smith said he was unable to retrieve information pertaining to the incidents.

“We’ve never interfered with note taking, we never refused to answer or provide notes or that sort of thing,” Smith said.

He said he plans on revisiting the letters sent by the SIU, but has “no requirement” to respond.

In comparison to the Toronto Police Service receiving 82 letters and the OPP obtaining 47, Windsor’s four letters are “not that bad,” Smith said.

Ombudsman Ontario and SIU officials were unable to comment on specific Windsor cases beyond the contents of the Marin’s report.

The SIU was created as a civilian watchdog agency in 1990 to conduct criminal investigations into police incidents involving serious injuries, deaths and allegations of sexual abuse. It is responsible for 58 police forces across the province.

“Ontario was on the right track when it created the SIU with a bold vision of complete independence and investigative authority,” said Marin in a statement. “But as we’ve seen over the past 21 years, that vision can’t be realized if the government doesn’t stand behind the SIU.”

This is the second report by the ombudsman on the effectiveness of the agency.

In a 2008 report titled Oversight Unseen, Marin found the SIU was “under-resourced, suffered from perceived pro-police bias and its investigations lacked rigour and transparency.”

He put forward 46 recommendations, including encouraging the agency to hire fewer ex-police officers and to create more severe penalties for those who don’t co-operate with its investigations. At the time, the report also urged the government to define the role and power of the SIU in provincial legislation.

Although the SIU has attempted to implement many of the recommendations, the government has not, said Marin.

This new report comes after a recent ruling by the Ontario Court of Appeal, which found that officers do not have the right to have their notes vetted by lawyers before submitting them to the SIU.

The families of two men shot dead by police in June 2009 in separate incidents had brought the case forward.

With files from PostMedia News

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