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When cops police cops Ten years. Twenty civilian deaths. And only five suspensions--all for the Barnabé beating. Can police officers be trusted to investigate themselves? by JACQUIE CHARLTON >>>> See also: Anatomy of a beating
At the party, two high-ranking Sûreté du Québec officers corralled an SQ inspector who had been appointed to investigate evidence-tampering by the force in a hashish-smuggling case called the Matticks affair. Angry words were exchanged, the inspector was called a "crosseur" (roughly translated as "traitor") and asked, "Who do you [investigators] take yourselves for if you think you can make recommendations on our investigation methods?" Things got so loud that finally their host appeared and told them to quiet down so the neighbours wouldn't be disturbed.
That the berated inspector was later suspended for disloyalty to the organization, while the two threatening officers were appointed to sensitive and prestigious positions, hints at how deeply the SQ is ingrained with blind solidarity and a masterful ability to avoid review.
The Poitras Commission has heard a great deal of similar testimony since it was first appointed to investigate allegations of SQ corruption 14 months ago. In the wake of the testimony thus far, a new question is being raised: why is a police force like this allowed to investigate killings by other police officers?
Solidarity forever
This week, Citizens Opposed to Police Brutality (COPB) is submitting a thick report to the Poitras Commission based on roughly 1,500 news articles, ethics commission reports and coroner's inquests. It details the deaths of 20 men at the hands of the MUC police in the past 10 years, and the subsequent SQ investigations into all but one of them.
That particular investigation, the 1987 shooting of Anthony Griffin, was conducted by MUC police internally. But because of widespread public dissatisfaction with the findings, all subsequent investigations were handed over to a separate force, the SQ.
Two problems remain with this policy, says the COPB. One is that the MUC police's inherent sense of solidarity acts as an obstacle to any investigation. The other is that, in their words, "there is a police solidarity that transcends [both the MUC and SQ] forces" which strikes a death knell for impartiality.
Why, for instance, the COPB wonders in the report, are police witnesses always grouped together when they're questioned, and not separated like civilian witnesses? One inspector is quoted in the report as saying he didn't sequester them because he couldn't "treat the police like common criminals."
In how many other cases, the COPB also asks, do police inspectors not even interrogate other officers implicated in a citizen's death? They cite a coroner's assistant, who said it was common practice to forego interrogating police officers at all because the officers automatically exercised their legal right to remain silent on questions that might incriminate them.
This neat system worked so well, says the COPB, that no police officers were ever implicated in any of the 20 deaths, except those who beat Richard Barnabé into a coma.
Ignoring testimony
The COPB, then only a month old, began its research after the killing of Martin Suazo in 1995. The organization observed glaring differences between the SQ's report into the shooting and what independent witnesses were reporting. At the time, the SQ concluded that the shooting of the passive, handcuffed Suazo was an accident--"a defect of the gun or the result of an involuntary maneuvre"--and seemed strikingly reluctant to interview an eyewitness who contradicted this claim. Not only did they declare the death accidental before they had even talked to the witness but, according to the report, didn't bother to take the witness's testimony until he had called them and insisted on it three times.
"We don't put a lot of value on investigations of the police by other police," says the COPB's Yves Manseau. "We want to put a monkey wrench in their well-oiled machine. You know how this well-oiled machine developed? They used public inquiries, not to improve things, but to know how to do things better next time. Their real goal is to manage the media crises around these events."
Corporal Ronald Boudreault of SQ Public Relations said he could not comment on the COPB's allegations until the Poitras Commission has made its final report.
At the end of the COPB's report are 10 recommendations, among them that an independent study be set up on the problems of police inquiries into other police, that one per cent of the police force budget be allocated to finance human-rights organizations providing civilian surveillance of the police, and that Criminal Code restrictions on the use of "necessary force" be tightened.
>>>> See also: Anatomy of a beating
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Amidst the revelations of planted documents, botched investigations and mysteriously lost criminal money unearthed by the Poitras Commission into Sûreté du Québec wrongdoing, there is an account of a certain poolside party. It may be at the heart of a slew of accusations, and certainly stands out for its sheer old-fashioned, collusive, thug-cop behaviour.