IN THE DARK ON POLICE RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

You might well think that if judges across Canada were finding, on average twice a week, that police were committing serious violations of citizens' Charter rights that there might be consequences for the officers responsible.

At least, you might think, the police forces involved would at a minimum sit up and take notice.

You might well think that, but it turns out you'd be wrong.

An investigation by Torstar journalists Rachel Mendleson and Steve Buist, with help from Western University law school's Hidden Racial Profiling Project, has identified more than 600 cases over the past decade in which police committed serious Charter violations — including storming into people's homes with weapons drawn on flimsy evidence, unwarranted strip searches, and filming partly naked women using the toilet.

Since 2017, judges have issued rulings about such violations of rights at a rate of two a week. They have identified nine police forces as violating rights on a systemic basis.

"The officers' flouting of the law is so serious," according to the investigation, "that judges warn it threatens public confidence in the justice system.

They've been forced to toss out key drug and gun evidence. Sometimes they throw out prosecutions altogether."

That's bad enough. It reveals a disturbing pattern of ignorance and arrogance among many police officers across the country.

And given that many violations of Charter rights are never challenged in court, those 600 rulings are likely only the tip of larger iceberg.

But it gets worse. Mendleson, an investigative reporter with the Toronto Star, and Buist, who is with the Hamilton Spectator, found that police forces and the officers directly involved often don't even find out about court rulings condemning their conduct.

The Toronto Police Service, for example, said it was unaware of 94 cases in which judges said its officers committed Charter breaches until Torstar informed them of the rulings.

Retiring Waterloo Region chief Bryan Larkin, who is also president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, said the lack of information flowing from the courts to police forces about Charter violations is "a national issue."

Some forces say they're prepared to investigate such incidents and take action if warranted. But they can't do that if they don't know the cases exist.

Other forces won't even say whether they know about rulings involving their officers, citing privacy laws.

The consequences of all this are serious.

The solution here seems straightforward: provinces and territories need to put in place reliable systems for alerting police forces and individual officers when courts find they have violated Charter rights.

That would be the first step toward identifying the problems and addressing them.

Without that basic measure there's little chance anything will change. web page the roles of a councillor, council and the mayor. This is not good enough. In any well-run company, each position has its identified roles and each is accompanied by the needed education, experience, qualifications, etc. needed for those roles.

We have a top-class university down the street. I hope that Brock would work with local municipalities to create a program that identifies municipal needs and then develops the curriculum that municipalities, employees and councillors alike, can attend to ensure the proper functioning of the city's operations.

I looked at the photo of the railroad trail and thought this is nicer than Walkers Creek Trail! Then I saw council wanted to spend $1.7 million to turn it into a sidewalk.

It seems council thinks civic improvement must include concrete and lots of money. No wonder folks who live there are unhappy. When I was able to ride a bike five years ago, I thought Walkers Creek Trail was ideal. I saw mothers pushing strollers, seniors strolling, kids on bikes, etc.

I can understand grooming the existing trail, perhaps placing gravel on low spots, but spending close to $2 million? That's a waste of taxpayers money and destroying one more of our city's little jewels.