Complaints of sexualized conduct in British Columbia’s municipal police departments have been frequent enough for the province’s policing watchdog to launch its first systemic investigation into how forces deal with the problem.
The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner announced the probe Wednesday, in its first exercise of the power granted after an amendment to B.C.’s Police Act.
“Sexualized conduct in police workplaces, municipal police work places has been a recurring issue that I’ve seen far too often,” commissioner Prabhu Rajan said in an interview Wednesday.
Rajan said he hopes the investigation can shed light on how police forces can better handle sexual misconduct complaints, “to close any gaps and to protect people who may report and to strengthen public trust.”
He said using the office’s systemic investigation power for the first time would allow it to examine issues with “broad impact,” since sexualized conduct affects not only individual officers, but also potential police recruits and the public at large.
The investigation will involve the 15 municipal agencies under the complaint commissioner’s purview, and Rajan said all departments are expected to co-operate with the probe.
“It’s fair to say that many, if not most of the chief constables were concerned that a systemic investigation is a way of us somehow eliciting complaints,” Rajan said. “We made very clear that is not the purpose of a systemic investigation. It is not individual based.”
He said past victims or complainants will not be compelled to participate unless they want to, even though they could technically be compelled.
“That would not be a proper or trauma-informed approach,” he said. “Certainly we would not use this process and cause re-victimization of anybody.”
He said individual cases are often manifestations of broader workplace issues, and a systemic investigation can highlight the roles of not only police leadership in departments, but also police boards and unions in preventing problematic behaviours.
“Frontline officers often get named in individual cases, but I am frankly as concerned if not more concerned with an environment that maybe allows that conduct to occur,” he said.
The Office of Police Complaint Commissioner said in a statement announcing the probe that sexual misconduct in police workplaces undermines “operational effectiveness” of law enforcement.
