Ontario Civilian Commission on Police Services Falsified Report
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The OÂntario Civilian Commission oÂn Police Service (OCCPS), a civilian oversight agency, falsified police complaint statistics in their 2003 Annual Report painting a rosy picture of the sham the public complaint system has been since 1997 when the OÂntario Government changed the Police Services Act and created OCCPS.
According to the Ministry of Community Safety & Correctional Services, OCCPS is an independent civilian quasi-judicial agency responsible for ensuring the adequacy and effectiveness of policing services and ultimately, chiefs of police, members of police services and police services boards are accountable to the public through OCCPS.
In June 2004, the Ontario Government appointed Patrick J. LeSage, former Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Ontario, to lead the now oÂngoing Police Complaints Review. Mr. LeSage’s mandate is to review all aspects of the public complaint system dealing with the role of the police oÂnly and excludes the roles of the police services boards and OCCPS.
Between 1998 and 2003, there were 16,435 public complaints against the police in Ontario. Anyone who made a complaint is not alone in feeling as if entering The Twilight Zone instead of what is called the public complaint process. Under the provisions of the Police Services Act, every complaint is subject to this process that may take up to a few months and that ends with what is called a complaint disposition.
OCCPS reported a total of 2,845 public complaints in 2003 but reported them fraudulently by re-distributing hundreds of them among different police services province-wide. For details, see this submission to the Police Complaints Review.
@ August 26, 2004