Wow Hyperion, your idea, either broken down to its constituent parts or taken as a whole, is just one of the worst ideas ever broadcast on this board. It represents a sort of punitive ignorance that would create a mess 1,000,000 times worse than the alleged mess it purports to clean up.
Here's why:
HyperionTheEvil HyperionTheEvil:
I mean current civil rights lawyers and the proposed group would not be 'reactive' but proactive, it would permanently be watching members of law enforcement and investigating any civilian complaints, including but not limited to racism, corruption and brutality .It would be asking question and those question would have to be answered, not in a day, not in week, but immediately This board would be permanent, powerful and separate from police forces, their role would not be to consult police but rather and investigative body that would deal with police wrong doing and complaints by citizens. As i said other current or former law enforcement individuals would be excluded from this particular group.
Right off the hop, you've got a board of people who are given a mandate to investigate the police, yet, an immediate disqualification are those who are or were law enforcement. How is this board going to receive instruction on how to investigate? Who is going to teach them? Do you just suppose that investigating is an innate skill? How does one judge if a permanent board member is qualified?
This proves to be an ongoing problem in your solution, so we'll revisit it later in greater detail when it rears its ugly head.
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The police force, its records (all of them ) would be transparent to this particular board, the records, audio and video tapes, files, police notes.
You've opened a can of worms here. What is going to be included in your grab of police records are: National security files for which Top Secret clearance is required, confidential informant information will be disclosed unvetted (who gets sued for the breach of confidentiality? Is your board going to simply defy Supreme Court decisions governing this confidentiality like R v. Leipart? Interesting proposal...) not to mention all of the sexual assault files which would be disclosed to third-parties (Take that rape victims! Somebody is going to read your file willy-nilly and make with it what he will, so, come on forward with your complaints now!) plus any other information kept confidential, like the locations of battered women, witness names and if and where they've been relocated.
You also run smack-dab into the problem of ongoing investigations. Sensitive murder investigations in which the police have either hold-back information (which has just been disclosed en masse to this board) or large-scale drug investigations in which the police are patiently waiting on a deal to go down are exposed.
And what about on-going wiretaps? They're mandated in the Criminal Code NOT to be disclosed unless further ordered by a Judge! Shall we just break laws left, right and centre? I guess so.
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This data could be called without notice, which means if officer "X" finished his/her shift and was notified that his/her notes are required that they would have to produce them immediately, that is before even they think about changing clothes their note books would be gathered, sealed and delivered to this board. This and any other information as to conduct would be required to be produced without delay. Should there be a delay that the persons who originally created the record and or maintains them would be suspended immediately (that is that very day) without pay until the information is provided.
You're grossly misinformed about the nature and purpose of police notes. They're not a ledger of a cop's daily activities, but rather, notes personalized to refresh his memory at court or during his investigations. When you take the actual notebook from a cop, you've rendered that notebook practically inadmissible at each and every trial for which the cop would use it. Judges routinely ask cops "Have there been any alterations, changes or additions since you made these notes?" as part of qualifying the notes. Thanks to you and your board, the cop must say "Nope. They were taken out of my possession and handled by I don't know how many people. I can't say that there were any alterations, changes or additions."
Let's not forget all of the above problems from seizing all police records too. That same data is held in a police notebook. Congrats, you've made yourself doubly liable for each transgression.
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It would also have the right to suspend any member who refused to cooperate with the board in it's investigation. Members of law enforcement would be required - that is required to testify - if a complaint is registered and they would have to justify their actions to this civilian board.
And now your board operates in complete disdain for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and general Canadian jurisprudence. Gone is a cop's right to remain silent as covered in S.11(.c.) of the Charter. Also, your wording presumes guilt which flies in the face of innocent until proven guilty. Is the complaint ever examined to determine its validity? You’ve stacked the deck such that any Tom, Dick and Harry can walk in off the street, file a complaint and jam up the cops with immediate trials. Hope the Hell’s Angels and other gangs don’t find out they can do this!
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In terms of controversial laws , such as the mythical "5 meter law" that was announced during the G-20 the police force would be required to not only have legislation passed, by a legislature, that legislation would also have yo withstand a constitutional legal test test prior to it's being enforced, to ensure that civil rights are protected beforehand.
Well, now you’re just exposing complete ignorance about protecting civil rights. Notwithstanding Paul Martin’s grandstanding with the same-sex marriage law, the Charter of Rights doesn’t protect ideas, it protects people. In other words, somebody has to be affected by the law to have standing to protest that it offended their Charter rights. Simply put, you cannot send laws in Canada to have their validity determined (aside from Martin for which the Supreme Court should not have granted certiorari) prior to their enactment because the Constitution is not set up to deal with them that way. Plus, even if the Supreme Court disallows a law, the provinces or the federal government can politely tell them to pound sand and overrule them. I expect your examples would all offend portions of the Charter covered by S. 33.
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For police brutality cases or corruption, the police would be held to a higher standard of the law. In cases of brutality specifically , presumably law enforcement would do what it usually does and say it was' "necessary force" it would be investigated to see that if any - that is any - other means to resolve the situation, if the board decides that the violence used was outside of other option the case would be forwarded only then to crown prosecutors for prosecution, in either case the officer in question would be suspended without pay.
This is another place where your disqualification of police officers proves to be horribly problematic. Simply put, how does one determine the validity of the “any other means” to resolve a situation? You’ve gone and stripped a cop of any sort of context, experience, perception and legal defence because some untrained unaccountable armchair quarterback can imagine something nicer and the cop gets suspended without pay!
Imagine this scenario: A perfectly fine cop is having a tough time getting a drunk into a car, so he puts his knee on the drunk’s back and shoves him in. Your board decides that perhaps if the cop had simply asked for co-operation just
one more time the drunk would have capitulated and gotten into the car. Now, no examination is done to find out if the cop’s actions, given the above noted circumstances, were justified is done because there is unexamined conjecture, so he’s suspended without pay pending a trial.
Circumstances play a colossally important role in determining the justification of a cop’s actions. Eyebrock can certainly tell you that his experiences in policing around Toronto are going to be so different from an OPP up in Pickle Lake that the two may as well be working different jobs. However, your board, which consists of anything BUT police officers, is going to vitiate the need for examination of circumstance how?
How do you expect a Crown to prosecute this case? A Crown would have to prove that the cop had the intention of causing bodily harm rather than the execution of his duties. Given that reasonable use of force is legislated for the cop, he’s got a defence to intent which the Crown has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Your solution of automatic referrals is going to burden the system.
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for officers that commit "ordinary" such as speeding,drunk driving, etc etc. This board again would interview such officer and determine if that officer is fit to wear the uniform. If the officer in question is unable or unwilling to explain themselves then their employment would be terminated.
Once again, this just shits all over the Charter of Rights. If a cop charged with a crime exercises his constitutional right to silence, he’s fired. He’s deprived of an operating mind and compelled to be a witness against himself. How noble of your proposal.
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For corruption cases anyone who willingly enters into law enforcement would sign a waiver to allow said board to have full , complete and real time access to their financial records at all times. This includes bank statements, investments, business dealings, loans, plus complete and total access their spouses accounts and immediate families.
There are two massive, massive problems with this. What happens if a spouse refuses to allow her bank statements to be read by the board? What happens to the cop? Is he fired? How is this within his realm of control? Do you expect spouses to be obedient to waivers signed by others? What happens if the board reads the spouse’s bank accounts and finds a suspicious transaction? Can they compel the spouse to testify against the cop even though this violates the Canada Evidence Act?
What about the children of cops? If a cop’s son has a series of cash deposits in his bank account but refuses to co-operate and explain their origin, what happens to the cop?
The other massive problem is that the banks are given no recourse. Under current legislation, banks are compelled to obey production orders because they are issued by Justices specific to a criminal inquiry. Your proposal has no criminal inquiry, it merely catalogues cop’s (and their family’s) banking activities for unspecified purposes. How nice for the banks to have to do this. How are they compensated for this? Do they have recourse if the burden imposed on them is unreasonable? What if they refuse to co-operate?
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In essence the point of all this is destroy the 'thin blue line' and to give a powerful reminder of who the police work for, citizens. If you don't like the job then get the hell out, no one drafted you. And the work that police officers are supposed to be doing is protecting society and upholding the laws of the land. If they think that they have somehow become 'special', to one extent they are, they should be held to a much much higher standard that your average citizen.
This comes back to the punitive ignorance which forms the spirit of your post. It comes down to a thinly veiled anti-cop screed without thought for the consequences of your proposals provided they just bust up cop’s jobs.
Who do you expect is actually going to do the job under the circumstances you’ve proposed, given all of the other routine hell a cop catches each day such as potential for getting shot, stabbed, spit on and abused? Either you’re going to have to jack the salaries up to around $200,000 for a front-line officer to compensate for your ill-thought draconian measures, or you’re going to get the retards willing to put up with such a witch-hunt.
At some point, you’re going to have to trust the cops to do their jobs with honour. Trying to manufacture a system where cops operate in the absence of trust just blew up in your face.
CKA Uber 
CKA Moderator 
I would have put the numbers at five, ten thousand. Or are you talking about all the cops in Canada?
