Civilian police oversight review won’t become public: Nunavut justice minister

Justice Minister Keith Peterson said an internal review within his department that looks at how other jurisdictions handle the civilian oversight of police will not be made public. (FILE PHOTO)

A recently completed review by Nunavut’s Department of Justice on how other jurisdictions handle the civilian review of police will be used for internal purposes and not released to the public, Justice Minister Keith Peterson said March 2 in the Nunavut legislature.

“It’s not a report I’m going to make public, but it’s an internal report that we will use to consider other organizations, and who can provide oversight and investigations of police,” Peterson told Iqaluit-Sinaa MLA Paul Okalik, who asked Peterson for an update following his request for the review in October 2016.

The Nunavut RCMP, under the terms of a policing contract with the Government of Nunavut, use the Ottawa Police Service exclusively to do third-party external investigations into police shootings of civilians and allegations of police brutality in Nunavut.

In 2015, the OPS investigators cleared two Nunavut RCMP officers of suspected excessive force against Bernard Naulalik, 24, after an Iqaluit jail cell video was released to the media showing the officers pinning Naulalik to a bunk and punching him in the face or neck.

In June last year, a 16-month investigation by the OPS concluded that an Iqaluit police officer “acted within the scope of his duties” during a jail cell video that saw the officer punching a naked and intoxicated Eetooloo Ejetsiak in the face with a fist clenching a taser gun.

The Department of Justice review—which Peterson said had started prior to Okalik’s request in October—took on new urgency after Sgt. Chris Hrnchiar of the OPS posted racist comments on an online Ottawa Citizen article about the death of renowned Cape Dorset artist, Annie Pootoogook, Sept. 24.

“The Ottawa Police Service can no longer be trusted to conduct independent investigations,” Okalik said Oct. 18, 2016, during question period.

Peterson said his department is “looking at other jurisdictions and other organizations across Canada” to determine the next step.

“We’ll be looking at other organizations, civilian and provincial police, who can provide a level of service to us in Nunavut and give us other options,” he said.

But Okalik criticized Peterson for not keeping Nunavummiut informed on the findings of the review.

“The people of Nunavut also need to know about the results of the investigation related to the police,” Okalik said.

According to Peterson, the Department of Justice has completed the data-collecting phase of its review, and is currently conducting “a more detailed analysis of civilian oversight.”

A former Ontario Special Investigations Unit director, Ian Scott, told Nunatsiaq News in a 2015 interview that a lack of transparency during internal police investigations erodes public confidence in the institution.

“Ottawa police might have conducted the most thorough investigation in the world, but we don’t know if it was thorough. And that goes to the issue of transparency,” Scott said.

Various forms of civilian oversight for police exist in 10 provinces and some Canadian cities, as well as oversight bodies for military police and First Nations police.

The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP also handles complaints about RCMP conduct but potential criminal charges are often handed to external policing bodies for case review.