Late last year, the Ontario Civilian Police Commission (OCPC) reversed a finding of discreditable conduct against a Toronto police officer.
And what began as a seven-year process of disciplining an officer for inappropriate language turned into a case of the police defending the methods of its ranks.
While the peculiar system of police discipline promises accountability to the public, the case illustrates that it’s barely able to produce employee discipline, even to the most basic standards.
Constable Adam Campoli was charged under the Police Services Act along with another officer. Both were involved in the strip search of Darren John, a Black man who had been arrested on a public mischief charge.
Along with the charge of discreditable conduct for using abusive language toward a member of the public, Campoli was charged with two additional counts of discreditable conduct for an alleged unlawful strip search and unlawful search of a vehicle.
The charges associated with the strip search and vehicle search were dismissed by a Toronto police tribunal in 2019, even though both officers failed to state justification for the strip search in their notes.
But the hearing officer, Superintendent Riyaz J. Hussein, accepted that there was “clear and convincing evidence” that Campoli used profane language in three separate comments, warranting a finding of discreditable conduct.
Campoli testified that he only uses profanities in certain situations (in this case, a Black complainant who didn’t want a flashlight shone in his car). The hearing officer did not accept the officer’s account as a legitimate justification.
He referred to an audio recording of the incident to conclude that profanities were not warranted. In general, the use of profanities cannot be accepted as “legitimate tactical communication,” Hussein ruled. It was simply not professional for police to act that way.
The hearing officer also rejected the argument by Campoli’s lawyer that the context and target for such language should be factored into the situation. Instead, Hussein sided with the prosecution that “the target of that language is irrelevant” and “this language was used without justification and it’s irrelevant whether or not there was provocation by the complainant… de-escalation and tactical communication can be accomplished without the use of profanity.”
Hussein goes on to state in his decision that “The public must be confident that the police are under control at all times and are properly trained to address even the most frustrating of circumstances.”
Campoli appealed that decision and the OCPC reversed the decision on the grounds that Hussein did not correctly apply the test for discreditable conduct.
The Commission’s panel determined that discreditable conduct should be interpreted through the question of whether the conduct of the officer was likely to bring discredit on the police force. Applying a “reasonable person test,” they found that Campoli’s use of profane language did not meet that threshold to bring disrepute on the force.
The Commission found that what they characterized as “a gun call” creates circumstances that allow for the use of profane language. The Commission was of the view that profane language was understandable given “a tense, inherently dangerous and often confusing situation.”
This ran counter to the officer’s own testimony, who claimed that he only used profanities to “expedite” the situation and that profanities allowed him to “gain compliance immediately.”
Seven years since the events, the Commission decided that no public interest would be served by ordering a new hearing for Campoli.
This case is not out of the ordinary. Few public complaints, once vetted by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director and resulting in charges, end in a finding of guilt once dissected by police tribunals.
Public complaints can be assigned to categories of employee misconduct, namely discreditable conduct, neglect of duty and unlawful/unnecessary exercise of authority.
In the past, these categories encompassed complaints against Toronto police officers as diverse and significant as illegal searches of vehicles and strip searches, inappropriate use of force, using police records for non-police purposes, using profane language dealing with members of the public, unlawfully entering dwellings, not maintaining proper notes and disabling in-car camera/audio recording devices.
Because disciplinary measures are applied to police officers in their capacity as employees, penalties that result from substantiated findings of misconduct often strike outsiders as inadequate.
Those penalties range from a reprimand to compulsory training, treatment or counselling, to being docked pay.
Additionally, the disciplinary hearings allow performance reviews and service awards to factor into the sentencing, often resulting in a reduced penalty for the officer.
Police misconduct is assessed through a combination of profession-specific judgment and the exacting standards of law.
Under these conditions, it is difficult for a complainant’s understanding of events to gain traction because it is being evaluated by two sets of standards that, when combined, are disposed to favour the officer’s perspective.
Whereas employee misconduct is judged by one set of standards known only to police officers, standards and frameworks drawn from criminal procedure work to exploit the rules of evidence to diminish an officer’s responsibility and drive a wedge between the officer’s actions and their public consequences.
It’s as if disciplining a police officer is a conclusion to be avoided at all costs.
