It is not at all surprising that the recently released Tulloch Report should identify so many areas in which Ontario’s system of police oversight can and should be significantly improved.

The need for such surgical intervention has been frequently highlighted in the public outcry for justice, accountability and transparency in recent months and years.

In two of those instances of public outcry, namely the death of Andrew Loku and Sammy Yatim, the issue was more than the use of excessive force.

The greater outrage was over the perception that the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) had failed to hold the police officers involved to proper account and had also failed to inform the families and the public of the contents of the SIU investigations and reports.

What legal arguments and evidence had been accepted and not accepted as the basis for the conclusions arrived at in those investigations and reports?

For a start, even before one gets into those important technicalities, ignorance has not been bliss. The preparatory work for the Report has created greater public awareness of the fact that there are three bodies, not just one, that make up the province’s police oversight system.

For that reason, the provided the following clarification:

“The first of those bodies is the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which investigates police-civilian interactions that result in serious injury or death to a civilian. The second is the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD), which oversees public complaints about the police in Ontario. And the third is the Ontario Civilian Police Commission (OCPC), which primarily adjudicates appeals of police disciplinary hearings, among a number of other functions.”

It is both unfortunate and embarrassing for the province’s law and justice authorities that, in the course of the widespread consultations that formed part of the reporting process, a large number of Ontario’s residents were found to be totally unaware of the existence of the OIPRD and the OCPC.

Among the numerous recommendations formulated in the Report that will be fully supported by the public are the following:

– developing greater social and cultural competency within the oversight bodies and ensuring that the oversight bodies better reflect the diversity of the communities they serve

– allowing the SIU the discretion to conduct investigations into any criminal matter when it is in the public interest to do so

– clarifying that the SIU has the discretion to lay a charge for any criminal or provincial offence uncovered during an investigation

-clarifying the police’s duty to cooperate and including a sanction for failure to cooperate with the SIU

– releasing the SIU director’s report to the public, in cases where the SIU does not lay a charge after a full investigation

– releasing past SIU reports, subject to the privacy considerations of affected persons and families, in  every case involving a death; in any case, when requested by the affected person, or if that person is deceased, by a family member of the affected person; and in any other case, when requested by any individual, if there is a significant public interest

– collecting demographic data that includes gender, age, race, religion, ethnicity, mental health status, disability, and Indigenous status

– adopting best practices in the collation and management that data, including the analysis and disclosure of the data

– granting the OIPRD the power to lay disciplinary charges against police officers, rather than having to direct a chief of police to do so

– ensuring greater independence and impartiality of all three oversight bodies, by instituting processes for the recruitment and training of investigators, prosecutors and board members with a wider range of skill sets

– reporting periodically to involved parties about the status of the complaint;  developing performance metrics that are reportable to the public; and collecting and publishing summary information on the outcomes of public complaints

– specifically, enhancing the oversight agencies’ cultural competency when interacting with Indigenous and Black persons, through, inter alia, mandatory cultural competency training for all of their staff

– developing and delivering, within all three agencies, effective civilian oversight of policing in First Nations communities

– establishing a College of Policing as a valuable compliment to the existing oversight regime in the province

On the other hand, the public will not be pleased with one of the measured recommendations proposed in the Report.

That recommendation involves putting in place the policy principle that a police officer’s name should only be released when an investigation results in that officer being charged.

Furthermore, it may be useful for the province to add two disciplinary measures that did not appear in the Report: applying harsher punitive measures for police officers found guilty of criminal or unethical conduct and giving police chiefs the authority to dismiss police officers in the most grievous of such cases.

Mr. Justice Michael H. Tulloch and his team are to be congratulated for their top quality Report.