Reasonable Apprehension of Bias - Police Investigating Police

“The RCMP's watchdog says it's time to halt the practice of the federal police force investigating its own members in cases of serious injury or death”.

http://www.vancouversun.com/RCMP+watchdog+wants+investigation+rules/1884653/story.html

The official RCMP response to the Report on Police Policing the Police is that the report is “…unduly negative and in some instances quite misleading”.

http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/news-nouvelles/speeches-stat-discours-decl/20090729-cpc-cpp-eng.htm

Now, I am not going to summarize all of the findings in the Report; nor am I going to brief the RCMP official response. The question as to whether police should investigate themselves is in my view an obvious NO.

We live in a society of nepotism. We live in a world where it is often not what you know, but who you know that results in advancement through various social, political, judicial, employment and other circles. Many circles are governed by a schoolyard type mentality, where you don’t report on your peers or are at the very least loath to do so. There is little doubt that police – and others – fall into this category. They are protectionist.

On this point, I want to be fair to the police. Aside from being more public, armed with weapons and invested with a tremendous amount of trust and social responsibility, they are no different than a great many other groups. Lawyers are primarily policed by other lawyers (i.e., the law society). Though some might say judges are policed in court by lawyers, they are really ultimately policed by themselves. Judicial policing comes in the form of Appellate Courts and the seldom used Judicial Counsel. Though crown prosecutors are lawyers, and subject to the law society, they are primarily policed by Crown prosecutors.

My point is, anybody who has worked in any kind of work or office environment knows the internal workings of the environment create a form of kinship between those working together. With this in mind, does it really ever make any sense to have peers investigate peers in anything?

In law we use a term called “reasonable apprehension of bias”. In short, this concept asks whether a reasonable and ordinary person, fixed with knowledge and understanding of the issues, would perceive bias on the part of another. Reasonable apprehension of bias does not require the high standard of proving “actual bias”; rather it is concerned with the reasonable perception of bias. Understanding the reality of nepotism, kinship, friendship and interests in common, is it not reasonable to assume that there would be bias when police investigate police?

Notwithstanding this issue requires far more analysis than I am prepared to give it here, the question still remains. It is one of those wicked, questionable questions.

David G. Chow
Calgary Criminal Lawyer

www.calgarydefence.com