Chief of Police Procedures

Provincial Compliance Requirements

 

Section 19 of Ontario Regulation 3/99: Adequate and Effectiveness of Police Services, of the PSA, requires the Chief to establish procedures on POU services that:

 

  • set out the circumstances in which a POU, or a squad within a unit, may be deployed;
  • require that if the police service maintains its own POU, the police service’s procedures on public unit services are contained in a manual that is available to all members of the unit; and,

  • ensure that a person who is a member of a POU has the knowledge, skills and abilities to provide that service.

     

The PSM guideline, PO-001, also provided advice on what the procedures, public order manual, and skills development and learning plan should address, along with a list of designated equipment and facilities. 

 

While our inspection largely found chief’s procedures to be compliant with PSA regulatory requirements, the IoP found some instances requiring attention or further consideration, including:

 

  • inconsistencies within the procedures;
  • no procedural steps outlining a debriefing process;
  • not providing circumstances in which a POU can be deployed; and,

  • instances of not maintaining a Public Order Manual.

     

The requirement for the chief to establish procedures on public order maintenance is continued, with modification, under the CSPA and its regulations. Multiple advisory features from the PSM are now prescribed requirements for the purpose of establishing written procedures on public order maintenance, including, but not limited to: 

 

  • debriefing a public order incident; and

  • setting out circumstances for deployment.

     

Both are important elements, and the current state of compliance in relation to them, are discussed further in this section.

 

The IoP’s Findings 

 

i) Inconsistencies 

Our inspection found four police services with inconsistencies in their respective Chief’s procedure. The inconsistencies were minor in nature (such as the Chief’s procedure not referring to its own police service, but to the originating service that provided its procedure) and appear to be a result of copying verbatim the police service guidelines provided in the PSM or from a chief’s procedure from another service. 

 

There was also an example of references to other procedures that have since been renamed or assigned updated reference numbers. Similar to issues identified in board policy, these inconsistencies signal gaps in the service’s quality assurance process and suggest that further internal assessment is required to ensure regular maintenance of procedures that align with board direction and police service practice. While the minor inconsistencies and/or lack of review did not appear to alter the understanding of the Chief’s procedure and did not impact police practices, it signals a lack of attention to details that can matter. This attention to detail is important: it ensures the service will identify more significant issues and adjust to address them before they manifest into more serious problems that can disrupt the effective delivery of policing locally.

 

Our inspection also noted that several procedures from different police services had a review date scheduled, however, upon further inquiry, we determined that many of those procedures had not been reviewed in line with this schedule. It is essential that police services follow a process to review and update procedures on a regular schedule.