friends of dufferin grove park
Appendix 2 of our letter to Michael Bryant - Some questions

This is Appendix 2 to the response letter we wrote to the Attorney General in response to his request for input into the matter of handling complaints about the police.

Appendix two: Questions and Issues - Review of public complaints about the police
Complaints process

When and why was the complaints process established?

Was the process set up in response to any actual situation(s) or concern(s)?

What was the complaints process set up to achieve? In simple, practical terms, how was this goal to be achieved?

Was the complaints process set up to respond to particular types of complaints about the police?

  • Were there any types of complaints that the process was not intended to handle, and if so why not?
  • Was the complaints process designed to treat concerns that citizens have about police behaviour in public space in a special or different way than other types of complaints? Why or why not? For example, is there or was there ever any intention to look at citizens' concerns about "community policing" in response to the goals of "community policing".
    • for example, we feel that complaints relating to inappropriate police behaviour in public space, often "community policing" must be dealt with differently than other types of incidents because they reduce the trust built up between different groups in the park, and therefore they reduce the harmony and good order of the park

Was the complaints process envisaged as a solely formal mechanism or was there an effort to allow for the possibility for people to explore informal ways of resolving their concerns about the police?

  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
  • What, in practice, are the formal and informal avenues available to a person or group of people who wish to complain about the police? For example, can and do people, in practice:
    • talk to the police officers whose behaviour has troubled them?
    • invite police officers and supervisors responsible for the park and neighbourhood to visit their neighbourhood/park/area and learn more about what happens there?
    • talk to supervisors about troubling incidents with the option of triggering or not pursuing a formal complaint, according to their degree of satisfaction?
      • in our experience, existing complaints are either ignored or dealt with as formal complaints which offers no possibility of discussion

How much flexibility is there in the process for people, acting either on their own or with other people in their neighbourhood, to put forward ideas for resolving their concerns other than those set out in the process?

  • Have the advantages and disadvantages of this type of flexibility been considered?
  • Why or why not?

How has the complaints process worked/not worked?

  • how and by whom is this success/lack of success determined?
  • is the degree of success or lack of success evaluated by the people for whom the complaints process was set up to respond to?
  • in a very practical sense, what is different about police behaviour and the way that complaints about the police are handled since this process was established?

What are the costs of the existing complaints process?

  • Has a cost comparison been done between formal vs. informal means of handling complaints?

What is commonly understood/presumed to be the context in which the people responsible for responding to public complaints operate?

  • For example, what is the rationale behind appointing the people who respond to complaints about the police?
  • Has there been any consideration of the problems with the inherent conflict of interest? For example, what are the advantages/limitations that "fact-finders" and decision-makers who respond to complaints about the police take on all the roles of prosecutor, judge and jury?
  • Whose interests and which goals are furthered by the choice of decision-makers?
  • What degree of independence is needed in order for fact-finders and decision-makers to think and act in a way that will help people to resolve their concerns about the police?
  • How much discretion does the decision-maker have with respect to handling any aspect of the complaint? What are the practical, informal or formal checks on the proper use of this discretionary power?
  • What, if anything do the people who make decisions about complaints need to know about the following:
    • the neighbourhood/area in which the person/people making the complaint live(s)?
    • previous experiences (both good and bad) that people in the area may have had with the police
    • other specific complaints by individuals or groups of people in the neighbourhood and how these complaints have or have not been resolved
    • whether any pattern has emerged between how people in the neighbourhood view the police and citizens' abilities to strike up a productive relationship so as to further the aims of people who live in the community
      • for example, we have made repeated attempts over the past 13 years to work co-operatively with the police who work in our neighbourhood and park; these efforts have been continually rebuffed. In our view, anyone who fields a complaint about the police has a much better chance of responding to the complaint thoughtfully and sensibly if he or she knows something of this history
  • What information is needed to deal with a particular issue and why?
    • For example, how does the decision-maker decide what weight to give to statements by citizens, either observers or people being stopped by police, and the police, particularly when elements of these stories contradict one another?
    • What criteria does a decision-maker use to decide whether or not the person complaining is or is not "directly affected by the policy, service or conduct that is the subject of the complaint" ?
    • What is the decision-maker's obligation to communicate the person/people who have complained?
Observers

What is the role of observers in the (formal or informal) complaints process, as it was initially conceived?

  • How are observers viewed, in practice, by both police and decision-makers?
    • In our experience, observers are viewed as a threat to police officers and as unwelcome meddlers with little or no credibility by decision-makers
  • What, in either formal or informal terms, can be done to encourage citizens to continue to observe police actions or inaction which concerns them?
  • How can citizens protect themselves from charges of obstruction? What kind of information or help is available to citizens who wish to keep an eye on what the police are doing in their neighbourhood, but fear a charge of obstruction?
Community Policing*

*Although the issues related to community policing do not refer directly to the complaints process, we feel that these issues are key to an understanding of the concerns we have that lead to complaints about the police

  • What are the priorities of "community policing" and how are they determined? - - By whom?
    • As the people who live in our neighbourhood and spend time in our park, we are clearly the people who know what we wish the police to help us with. However, in our experience, the police priorities are not only very different from ours, but in many cases, the work that the police view as important, has left us with problems and distrust among different groups of people who use the park
      • For example, we want police to respond immediately to our calls for help in the following cases:
        • any situation involving violence;
        • to pursue vandals;
        • to city by-laws which attempt to balance the interests of different people and groups who use the park (e.g. enforce noise by-laws, etc.)
  • How are officers recruited and trained for "community policing"? What do they understand to be their obligations in this context?
  • What are their understandings of their roles and the roles of those people who live in the neighbourhood?
  • What do they know about/need to know about the neighbourhood in which they work? How do they get this knowledge?

See also: Appendix 1.