Aside for the management of its internal Affairs

Pierre-Paul Poulin / Le Journal

Valerie Gonthier

Friday, December 8, 2017 00:48

UPDATE
Friday, December 8, 2017 00:48

Look at this article

Treatment for executives or police officers, experienced classification, “parallel” of the complaints, attempted influence from investigators : the lack of will of Philip Pitcher of detecting abuses and irregularities to the internal investigations led to his downfall as chief of police of Montreal.

In its report-shock made public Wednesday, mr. Michel Bouchard spends more than 63 pages on 96 to the bad management of the Division of internal affairs the police Department of the City of Montreal.

Several police officers who worked on this section have expressed their frustrations as to the many irregularities.

Me Bouchard was first noted the absence of a system of tracking and monitoring the progress of investigations, boxes of confidential documents, hanging all around and the turnover of staff. But it has also found a true ranking “parallel” files.

Preferential treatment

Thus, records of complaints against managers have been opened without that we register the names in the array sequentially. Also, police officers have been in the habit of annotating multiple folders with a rating (code, INFO) assigned to folders for which there was insufficient evidence. A classification which did not require the managers to report the records to the minister of public Safety, as provided for in the Act on the police.

“If you don’t want to investigate it, class-in INFO “, would have been to respond to a police request for clarification on this double classification.

And the executives of the SPVM were often of the ” preferential treatment “, while their file was in a drawer under the rug “. It was not uncommon for an officer to be present at the office of internal Affairs in order to attempt to influence the managers as to the conduct of an investigation.

But on the other side, some police officers have been targeted by internal investigations “on the basis of suspicions prove to be unwarranted, or worse still, for reasons which are oblique or biased related to revenge,” the report says.

Police officers that testify in this survey lamented the misuse of the wiretap, an ” investigative tool powerful and very intrusive “, ” poorly used “.

“The internal Affairs was a gang of cowboys to 90 % “, it read.

Testimonials troubling police learned of the report

“When you open a folder [with the official classification], it may spoil the record of the police officer. “

“Never, the investigators could not investigate a person of higher rank. “

“The one who wanted it over so that the X or Y kept the folder to be investigated by him. “

“For executives, one tries to hide or cup until they are eligible for retirement. “

“When are the blue (agents) that are referred to, the abc of internal Affairs was well-respected… but when one fell on the sergeant-detectives, we had a lot of external interventions. “

“The internal Affairs present projects and each time they gave the impression that it is possible to catch the Kingpin of the mafia. “