quote:
A new report paints Canada’s military police leadership as shutting down complaints, ignoring parliamentary-mandated civilian oversight and bungling investigations to the point where a criminal convicted of attempted murder almost went free.
The report by the Military Police Complaints Commission, a civilian watchdog created by Parliament, outlines a deteriorating situation in which the office of the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal has been resisting independent oversight. “The situation escalated from resistance to outright refusal to respect the oversight regime mandated by Parliament,” commission chairperson Tammy Tremblay wrote in her annual report released Tuesday. At times the office of the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal, or CFPM, has shut down complaints into police actions before they could be heard, the MPCC report noted. The CFPM has also refused to provide information needed for the commission to carry out its oversight function and has declined to follow recommendations on improving how it functions, according to the report. Among the recommendations the CFPM refused to accept was a request to remind military police officers of the importance of keeping evidence on file.
So I've read as far as I've posted and this might be one of those things where I could just bold the whole article, it is so bad.
having just read the next paragraph, jesus hogfucking christ:
quote:
The CFPM commands all military police, including the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service or CFNIS.
The report also outlined how a bungled investigation by the CFNIS nearly allowed a person, eventually convicted of attempted murder, to escape justice. In that case, the CFNIS had been brought in to investigate a CFB Edmonton house fire in which a soldier was suspected of trying to kill her children. But the MPCC report pointed out that military police decided not to lay charges despite conclusions by the insurance company and the fire marshal’s office that the fire had been deliberately set as well as the discovery of an apparent suicide note from the soldier.
The Military Police Complaints Commission reviewed the case and determined there was evidence of a crime that ought to be reinvestigated. The soldier was found guilty in 2023 of trying to kill her three children by setting their house on fire.
Canadian Forces Provost Marshal Brig.-Gen. Vanessa Hanrahan provided the Ottawa Citizen with [lies][omitted]
The commission report issued Tuesday, however, pointed out that the MPCC made nine recommendations to the provost marshal in 2024 and 44 per cent of those were rejected. The MPCC report pointed out that in 2022 the provost marshal had accepted 100 per cent of the watchdog’s recommendations.
Recent court cases have raised concerns about the lack of professionalism of the CFNIS and military police.
In January, an Ontario Superior Court judge stayed assault and sexual assault charges against a Canadian Forces member after determining that military police had tampered with evidence and showed bias in their investigation. Ontario Superior Court Justice Cynthia Petersen noted in her written decision that the misconduct by the CFNIS “in this case is so egregious and systemic that it shocks the community’s conscience.”
Tremblay warned that continued refusal to accept civilian oversight would only harm military police in the end as public trust in the institution would be eroded. She noted that most of the problems in holding military police accountable could be fixed through legislative reforms proposed to the Liberal government in 2023. The government has not acted on those proposed reforms.
No comments:
Post a Comment