RCMP watchdog, N.W.T. clash on public complaints handling

December 14, 2009
CBC News

An independent police watchdog says RCMP in Inuvik, N.W.T., should not have tried to informally resolve a serious public complaint that police used a Taser on a girl.

However, the territory's justice minister says that's how complaints about the Mounties should be handled.

The clash of opinion comes after the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP identified a number of problems with police handling of the 2007 incident, in which an officer jolted the teenage girl with a Taser at a youth correctional facility in Inuvik.

In a report released Friday, commission chairman Paul Kennedy concluded the officer was not justified in using the stun gun on the girl, then a 15-year-old inmate at the Arctic Tern Young Offenders Facility. The girl cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Among the problems Kennedy highlighted in his report was that RCMP failed to properly investigate a complaint about the incident filed by the girl's mother, instead attempting to resolve her complaint informally.

Not appropriate to 'talk it out'
Kennedy said there are cases when a public complaint against RCMP can be dealt with simply by talking it over, but the Taser incident in Inuvik was not one of those cases.

"If it's a minor matter — rudeness and things like that — of course, please go and talk it out. But there are also limits. This was beyond the limit," Kennedy told reporters Friday in Yellowknife.

Kennedy's commission has maintained that serious complaints against police, such as allegations of improper use of force, should not be resolved informally. Instead, he said, a formal investigation should take place.

In his report, Kennedy noted RCMP in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut most often tried to resolve "use of force" allegations informally.

Government has own approach
But N.W.T. Justice Minister Jackson Lafferty believes otherwise, saying in a letter to MLAs that complaints against police should only be brought to the attention of Kennedy's commission if all else fails.

In the letter, obtained by CBC News, Lafferty talks about a protocol the territorial government and RCMP have developed for handling public complaints.

Lafferty's approach suggests three stages for handling such complaints:

1.Try to resolve it by talking to the RCMP detachment or district commander.
2.If that fails, bring the complaint to Lafferty's office, where it would be assessed based on information provided by the RCMP.
3.Start an investigation if needed. RCMP would brief Lafferty and the complainant's MLA on the outcome.
If all else fails, Lafferty says the complaint can then be brought to the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP.

"So we're the final resort, which means that you're having a system which is outside of the normal system," Kennedy said. "That, for me, merely compounds the problem I'm talking about."

A major part of the problem with RCMP resolving complaints informally is that there's often no record of how that complaint is handled, he added.

In his response to Kennedy's findings, RCMP Commissioner William Elliott agreed that the Inuvik complaint should not have been dealt with informally.

Mountie wrong to taser girl, 15, watchdog says

December 12, 2009
Tu Thanh Ha, Globe and Mail

Just months before Robert Dziekanski died in a 2007 confrontation with taser-wielding RCMP officers in Vancouver, at a juvenile centre in the Northwest Territories, a Mountie tasered a 15-year-old girl while she was handcuffed and lying face down.

Yesterday, in a scathing report about the incident in Inuvik, NWT, the RCMP civilian watchdog concluded that the officer was wrong to stun the girl, and that the Mounties improperly tried to brush off a complaint from her mother and conducted a biased internal probe.

Paul Kennedy, chairman of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, said that many deficiencies he found in the case "paralleled the systemic concerns" he has previously raised about the force's use of stun guns.

"This incident is a compelling case which ought to cause the RCMP itself to be concerned and take action," he said.

A steady critic of the RCMP's taser policy and its internal investigation system, Mr. Kennedy is in his last month on the job.

Ottawa is not reappointing him.

Yesterday's findings came three days after his report on the Dziekanski case, in which he said four Mounties used substandard policing when they tasered the Polish immigrant.

The Inuvik report also came on the day relatives of Clayton Willey were shown security-camera footage of the 2003 tasering of the 33-year-old aboriginal man from Prince George, B.C.

Mr. Willey died hours after the RCMP zapped him while he was handcuffed and face down at the local detachment.

His family has to decide whether the video will be made public.

In the Inuvik incident, Constable Noella Cockney was called to a youth facility on March 13, 2007, after a girl refused to take her prescribed antidepressant and became agitated.

She was handcuffed and three youth workers held down her arms and legs.

Constable Cockney told the girl several times to co-operate.

When she refused, the officer pressed the taser against her back and stunned her for five seconds.

Constable Cockney didn't keep proper notes and didn't mention in her report that the girl was tied and held down, Mr. Kennedy said.

His investigation concluded that the girl didn't pose a threat at the time she was tasered. Also, the constable's taser certification was expired.

The watchdog also found that detachment officers improperly tried to dispose informally of a complaint by the girl's mother.

It was only nine months later that the force acted on the complaint.

But the staff sergeant who reviewed the complaint was Constable Cockney's taser instructor, and he urged her to add more details to her notes, the report said.

Mr. Kennedy said the staff sergeant's probe was biased and speculative.

"The RCMP's approach to internal investigations is flawed and inconsistent ... those types of investigations do not engender confidence," Mr. Kennedy said.

His recommendations aren't binding on the RCMP.

"Obviously, your report identifies a number of significant failures on the part of the RCMP and members involved in this matter," RCMP Commissioner William Elliott said in a letter replying to Mr. Kennedy's findings.

He said the force has changed some of its policies dealing with public complaints and taser use.

RCMP had no grounds to use Taser on N.W.T. girl: report - Police force also accused of protecting officer

December 11, 2009
CBC News

An RCMP officer in Inuvik, N.W.T., was not justified in jolting a teenage girl with a Taser stun gun in 2007, a federal police watchdog agency has concluded.

Furthermore, the Inuvik RCMP detachment appears to have tried to cover up what happened, according to a final report released Friday by the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP.

"The manner in which the RCMP handled this matter was at best negligent and at worst biased," commission chairman Paul Kennedy wrote in his report, which was in response to a complaint filed by the girl's mother.

It's Kennedy's second damning report this week on the RCMP's use of Tasers. On Tuesday, he reported on the October 2007 death of Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver airport. making 16 recommendations that were highly critical of the actions of the four officers involved and the RCMP's followup investigation.

In Inuvik, two RCMP probes cleared the officer of any wrongdoing. A similar investigation by the N.W.T. Justice Department also cleared corrections officials who were involved in the incident.

Handcuffed, held down
The girl, whom Kennedy identified as "Miss X" in his report, was a 15-year-old inmate at the Arctic Tern Young Offenders Facility in Inuvik when on March 13, 2007, she was subdued with an RCMP Taser while she was handcuffed and held face-down on the floor by jail staff.

Miss X cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, as she was a minor at the time.

Kennedy said the officer who used the 50,000-volt stun gun, Const. Noella Cockney, had been called to the youth facility by staff who said the girl was not co-operating with their orders to go into a segregated area.

After Cockney gave Miss X several warnings, the girl swore at her and told her to go ahead and use the weapon. The officer "deployed the Taser for a full five-second cycle, causing Miss X to co-operate," Kennedy wrote.

2 versions of report
Cockney filed a report afterward, but it was undated and printed nine months later. Kennedy said that report did not provide any detail on what Miss X was doing to justify using the Taser.

Cockney was not certified to use a Taser at the time, as her qualifications had expired, Kennedy found.

In November 2008 — as Kennedy was launching his own investigation of the Arctic Tern incident — a second version of Cockney's report was produced with "substantive amendments" portraying the girl as "combative."

That RCMP report stated the girl "was pulling and kicking, trying to get up or away from the workers" and she "became more aggitated [sic] and was swearing and pulling harder at the workers to let go."

Kennedy said that portrayal of Miss X's behaviour was quite different from what he had heard from the youth workers who were there.

Inuvik RCMP officials told Kennedy they told Cockney her original report had "insufficient detail" and asked her to articulate better what happened.

Kennedy concluded that the girl was in no position to harm anyone.

Resolved complaint improperly
He also ruled that the Inuvik RCMP detachment tried to resolve the girl's mother's complaint informally, which Kennedy said is an improper practice in response to allegations of improper use of force.

"The RCMP's handling of Miss X's mother's complaint was deficient in its management, timeliness and the adequacy of the investigation, such that it leads to a strong perception of bias," Kennedy stated.

"Moreover, attempts to informally resolve the complaint, and the failure to properly document it, were contrary to RCMP policy."

Kennedy's report makes 14 recommendations, ranging from additional procedural training for the Inuvik RCMP officers to broader policy changes for the national police force.

"This public interest investigation revealed that many of the identified deficiencies paralleled the systemic concerns addressed in broad-scale analyses of RCMP processes, policies and conduct," Kennedy said in a release Friday.

"In fact, this incident is a compelling case which ought to cause the RCMP itself to be concerned and take action."

The RCMP has had Kennedy's report for almost three months, but it has yet to respond.

The commission is an independent, civilian-run agency created by Parliament to make sure complaints made by the public about RCMP members' conduct are examined fairly and impartially.

Kennedy's term at the commission ends on Dec. 31 and the Conservative government has said he will not be reappointed.

RCMP Complaints Commission to release investigation findings on RCMP use of Taser at Inuvik Arctic Tern Young Offender Facility

YELLOWKNIFE, Dec. 10 /CNW Telbec/ - Paul E. Kennedy, Chair of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP (CPC) will release findings from his Public Interest Investigation into the conduct of RCMP members involved in the use of a Taser (Conducted Energy Weapon) against a handcuffed 15-year-old female at the Arctic Tern Young Offenders Facility in Inuvik, Northwest Territories on March 13, 2007.

The investigation also looked into the conduct of RCMP members involved in the internal investigation which followed as a result of a complaint by the 15-year-old's mother.

Media representatives are invited to attend a news conference at 10:00 a.m. (Mountain time) on Friday, December 11, 2009 at the Yellowknife Inn (Gold Room), Yellowknife, N.W.T. Media can also participate via conference call.

When:
Friday, December 11, 2009
10 a.m. MST

Where:
Gold Room, Yellowknife Inn
5010 49th Street
Yellowknife, N.W.T.

For information on the Commission's investigation, please visit the CPC website at: www.complaintscommission.ca.

Media representatives who wish to listen to the press conference should contact the Commission representatives listed below for call-in instructions.

For further information: Jamie Robertson, Manager, Outreach, (613) 219-4595, Jamierobertson@post.com

RCMP review probe into N.W.T. Taser incident

October 9, 2009
CBC News

RCMP in the Northwest Territories are reviewing the findings of an independent investigation into a police officer's use of a Taser on a teenage girl in a young offenders' facility in Inuvik, N.W.T.

An Inuvik RCMP officer used the 50,000-volt stun gun to subdue the girl, who was 15 years old at the time, at the Arctic Tern Young Offender Facility on March 13, 2007.

The girl, who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, was laying on the floor with her hands cuffed behind her back at the time of the incident.

Corrections officials have said the teen was acting so aggressively that staff called in an RCMP officer.

Following an investigation by CBC News last year, the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP launched its own probe into what happened.

The independent police watchdog submitted its report to police for comments late last month.

A spokesperson for the commission told CBC News it hopes to release its report before the end of this year.

In addition to reviewing the 2007 incident, the commission also examined how impartial the RCMP was in its two investigations of the incident.

The police force had concluded that the officer who used the Taser on the girl did nothing wrong.

But the CBC News investigation found that at least one of the police probes was conducted by an officer who worked in the Inuvik RCMP detachment.

Another review by the Northwest Territories government cleared corrections workers of wrongdoing.

Northwest Territories mother says she was stunned by RCMP taser with kids on lap

January 14, 2009
CBC News

A woman in the Northwest Territories says RCMP jolted her with a Taser while child protection workers apprehended her children in Yellowknife last year.

The woman, who cannot be identified, told CBC News that two of her youngest children, aged one and five, were sitting on her lap when a Yellowknife RCMP officer used the electric stun gun on her.

At the time of the March 2008 incident, RCMP had forced their way into her Yellowknife home to help social workers apprehend her children, the woman said.

"I still wouldn't let my kids go, so they did it to me again," she said. "That's when I was in shock, I guess, because I couldn't move after that. And then they took my kids."

The woman complained to the RCMP, but she said a police investigation concluded that the officer who used the Taser on her had acted appropriately.

No one from the RCMP was available for comment when contacted by CBC News earlier this week.

Seeks apology

The woman said social workers had told her she could not have her children back unless she stayed away from their father, an alleged drug dealer. The woman said she had split up with the father a year earlier, but said he was in the house on the day police arrived.

The woman said she got her children back a month after the Taser incident, on the day she left Yellowknife to move to Inuvik, N.W.T. "I think what should've happened is at least get an apology, at least for my kids," she said. "They're still scared to this day. Like, they ask me if I'm OK, or if they're going to come back."

Complaint did not go to watchdog

The woman did not turn to the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, an independent police watchdog agency set up by Parliament. Members of the commission say more Canadians are turning to the agency, but add that many are still taking their complaints about RCMP conduct to the RCMP itself. "We certainly found that people were not that aware of the commission," said Brooke McNabb, a special adviser to the commission, who visited the North last spring.

"We have people who have training in mediation and in police investigations, we're set up to help people frame their complaint, so that when it is investigated there's a better chance that what's being looked at is what the real issues are for the complainant."

The commission is starting to receive more complaints from the Northwest Territories: it has received 25 complaints in the last nine months, compared to eight complaints three years ago.

Last month, the commission launched its own probe into a March 2007 incident at the Arctic Tern Young Offenders Facility in Inuvik, in which an RCMP officer used a Taser on a 15-year-old female inmate.

Two RCMP investigations, as well as a probe by the territorial Justice Department, cleared authorities of any wrongdoing in that case.

Investigations clear RCMP of wrongdoing in N.W.T. taser incident

November 27, 2008
CBC News

Three investigations, including two by the RCMP, have cleared police and corrections officials of any wrongdoing in the use of a stun gun on a teenage girl in Inuvik, N.W.T., last year.

The girl, who was 15 years old at the time of the March 13, 2007, incident, was an inmate at the Arctic Tern Young Offender Facility in Inuvik. She cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Corrections officials have said the teen was acting so aggressively that staff called in local RCMP, who used a Taser to subdue her. The girl's father told CBC News she was handcuffed on the floor when she was struck by the stun gun.

The RCMP has conducted two investigations into the Inuvik Taser incident: one that looked at whether a criminal charge should be laid against the constable who used the Taser on the girl, and one to determine if the officer had violated the force's code of conduct.

"The internal investigation under the RCMP Act was conducted in conjunction with the statutory investigation," Sgt. Wayne Norris told CBC News.

"There were no charges recommended, and there was no code of conduct issues found as a result of the investigation."

An Inuvik RCMP officer confirmed to CBC News that one of the investigators in the matter is a member of the local detachment.

But Norris would neither confirm nor deny that both investigations were carried out by members from the Inuvik detachment.

Norris said that, for the sake of impartiality, the results of the criminal investigation were sent to the Crown office in Whitehorse for an opinion on whether charges should be laid.

Impartiality questioned
But sending a report of the criminal investigation to the Crown for a second opinion is not always enough to claim impartiality, said the head of an independent agency that investigates serious allegations against Alberta police.

Clifton Purvis, director of the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, said Crown prosecutors have to rely on the information given to them by police.

"They don't direct the police," Purvis said. "All they can do is review what the police bring them."

A third investigation done earlier by the N.W.T. Justice Department cleared corrections staff at the Arctic Tern facility of wrongdoing in the incident.

But despite that report's conclusion, it was not until nine months after the incident that senior officials learned the girl had been lying on her stomach on the floor, with her hands in handcuffs behind her back, when she was shocked by the Taser.

The girl's parents told CBC News they believe authorities are more interested in covering up the incident than investigating it.

RCMP probe Taser incident involving girl in Inuvik jail

February 25, 2008
CBC News

RCMP in the Northwest Territories are investigating their use of a stun gun on a teenage girl at a youth detention centre in Inuvik last year.

The internal investigation into the March 27, 2007, incident at the Arctic Tern Young Offender Facility should be complete within a few weeks, RCMP spokesman Sgt. Larry O'Brien told CBC News.

Officers will examine whether the officers involved broke the law and whether they followed the RCMP's policies on Taser use when they shocked the girl with the electronic stun gun.

Corrections officials told CBC News last week that the teen was acting so aggressively that corrections staff called in police, who subdued her using the Taser.

The incident came to light last week when Inuvik Twin Lakes MLA Robert C. McLeod asked Justice Minister Jackson Lafferty about it in the legislative assembly.

Corrections director Darin Reeves said it was the first time a Taser had been used at an N.W.T. correctional facility. He said corrections officers did the right thing by calling in police. "No one wants to have an event like this happen," Reeves said. "Certainly when you're looking at protecting the environment itself and the youth from harming themself or others, you will go through every option you can to try and contain that situation." Reeves said the girl was examined afterwards and was fine. But the girl's mother has since been trying to get answers through McLeod about why the incident happened in the first place.

Taser use higher in Inuvik: RCMP

RCMP figures show there are more incidents involving Taser stun guns in Inuvik than anywhere else in the territory. Between September 2006 and November 2007, police reported a total of 54 Taser-related incidents in N.W.T., including 26 in Inuvik and seven in Yellowknife. O'Brien said those numbers include situations in which officers produced the weapon but didn't fire, as well as actual Taser use. Most of the time, he said, just saying a Taser will be used is enough to prompt people to co-operate. "It is certainly something you use, not as a last resort but when you're approaching a last resort," O'Brien said. "When you're to the point where you either use that or use a firearm, that would be a situation where members would be looking at using a conductive energy weapon."

O'Brien could not explain the discrepancy between Taser usage in Inuvik and Yellowknife, but said the number of officers in the two communities could play a role. Inuvik has two officers on duty on any given night, he said, while Yellowknife could have as many as eight officers. "If there's a situation in Yellowknife, we have the ability to bring multiple members to the scene in a short period of time. Those of us in policing know that the amount of police officers present usually has a big impact on the activities of the people involved in the complaint," he said. "Inuvik doesn't have that luxury. So they have to be very cognizant of what tools they have at hand, and that may go some way to explaining why the conductive energy weapons are being used more in Inuvik."

Tasers are involved in fewer than one per cent of arrests made in the territory, O'Brien said.