Julian Fantino’s at it again, stirring up you-know-what in another legal fight with the police watchdog Special Investigations Unit (SIU).
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Seems the OPP commissioner has no problem with officers who may be the target of SIU probes consulting with a lawyer before entering their notes into the record. Some would call that collusion. The cops call it exercising their Charter rights.
Fantino draws the thin blue line in a strange place for a guy who makes a lot of noise about demanding discipline from his troops above all else.
When he was top dick in Toronto and all that crap was coming down over cops on the take in the entertainment district, Fantino sure made a lot of pronouncements about honesty and integrity in policing. Those qualities apparently don’t apply when an OPP officer’s actions in the line of duty come under scrutiny.
Enter SIU director Ian Scott. The former Crown attorney wants the current note-taking practice declared illegal by the Superior Court.
Scott makes persuasive arguments in a 77-page factum filed with the court, among them that police officers have a professional duty to write independent and contemporaneous notes in the interests of the administration of justice.
In his submission, Scott also writes that officers who may be the subjects of SIU investigations and “witness officers” should no longer be permitted to compare notes or to get legal advice about what to put in them before submitting to questions from the SIU.
A June 24, 2009, shooting incident involving the death of Levi John Schaeffer in remote Osnaburgh Lake in northern Ontario is at the centre of the court proceeding.
Scott and the SIU cleared the officer involved in that shooting, but he noted in his report to his bosses in the Attorney General’s office that the officers in that case were instructed by their supervisor not to draft any notes until they had spoken with their union-appointed counsel. The SIU was also denied access to the officers’ first drafts of their notes on the grounds of lawyer-client privilege.
Scott’s criticism of the note-taking process was sharp in that report. “This… flies in the face of the two main indicators of reliability of notes: independence and contemporaneity,” he wrote. “The notes do not represent an independent recitation of the material events.”
Scott goes on: “I have a statutory responsibility to conduct independent investigations and decide whether a police officer probably committed a criminal offence. In this most serious case, I have no informational base I can rely upon. Because I cannot conclude what probably happened, I cannot form reasonable grounds that the subject officer in this matter committed a criminal offence.”
It’s not the first time Scott has found himself in that position and had to let cops off the hook with questions unanswered.
Another OPP shooting only two days before the Schaeffer incident, of developmentally delayed 59-year-old Doug Minty of Elmvale, ended similarly. In that case, the officers’ lawyers conferred with them at the scene before the SIU arrived on the scene almost four hours later.
Scott’s been a pain in the ass for police unions and chiefs on the note-taking business ever since he took over the SIU.
A noble effort, but Scott’s playing a very risky political game. The last thing Dalton McGuinty’s crew wants is a court decision forcing them to act on police officers’ duty to cooperate with the SIU.
Above all else, the Grits want labour peace. They’ve already asked cops across the province to keep wage demands in check in the interests of balancing the books.
Some say that both the Ontario Provincial Police Association and Toronto Police Association want the province to serve up Scott’s head, but the optics of removing him may not go over well for the Grits in the run-up to the 2011 election.
The there’s the Fantino factor to ball up the works. For some at Queen’s Park, his act is wearing thin and his retirement can’t come soon enough. His current contract expires in July.
But the Grits don’t want him making that much-rumoured jump to politics, running provincially or for mayor in Vaughan and screwing up their hold on the little fiefdom north of Toronto currently under Greg Sorbara’s watchful eye.
Perhaps the Grits can keep Fantino quiet by offering him the job of heading up security at the 2015 Pan Am Games. That could give him a smooth ride into retirement and sideline him as a candidate for the next five years. Maybe.
enzom@nowtoronto.com
