Recommendation 5

Chiefs should include deployment circumstances in POU procedures, and the sector should develop a standardized risk assessment tool for effective POU deployment decision-making

 

Chiefs should review their procedures to confirm they include a catalogue of circumstances in which a POU should be deployed. More specifically, the procedures should address the deployment of a POU for planned and unplanned public order incidents, including setting out circumstances for deployment, specifying the process for authorizing deployment, and identifying operational responsibility for authorizing deployment.

 

The Ontario Public Order Hub and the Ministry of the Solicitor General sector is encouraged to collaborate on the development of a single risk assessment tool to standardize the factors and risks to be considered for POU deployments in Ontario. The tool should guide decisions around consistent relevant points and should support and not run contrary to the Chief’s ultimate authority of deciding whether and how to deploy a POU locally. 

 

Upon completion of this work, police services that maintain a POU are further encouraged to incorporate the risk assessment tool into their procedures as part of their decision-making process to determine the risk level and an appropriate level of response, including whether to request assistance from another service through an agreement or temporary assistance under section 19 of the CSPA. 

 

Once a tool is developed, the IG strongly recommends of its consistent use by police services to become a compliance requirement under the relevant CSPA Regulation. 

 

iv) Public Order Manual

 

Up until April 1, 2024, police services were required to ensure that procedures on POU services were contained in a manual made available to all members of the POU. This requirement was contained within Ontario Regulation 3/99: Adequate and Effectiveness of Police Services of the PSA, and further guidance on the content of the public order manual was provided in the PSM. 

 

While the requirement to maintain a manual is no longer prescribed under the CSPA, the IoP does note considerable value in maintaining a public order manual that is available to members of the POU. The IoP recommends that police services that maintain their own POU continue the practice of maintaining a public order manual that is specific to the individual police service. The manual should include the guideline items that were listed in the PSM public order guidelines (PO-001), such as:

 

  • the unit’s mandate, functions, and members’ responsibilities;
  • deployment and reporting relationships;
  • command and control;
  • communications with unit members;
  • crowd management procedures, including response levels and negotiation;
  • incident assessment;
  • provision and use of equipment;
  • operational training;
  • the circumstances and processes for liaising with appropriate officials for the purposes of Sections 63 - 68 of the Criminal Code of Canada, regarding unlawful assemblies and riot situations;
  • use of training, operational and equipment logs;
  • debriefing process; and,
  • the selection process for members of the POU to ensure that the members have the knowledge, skills and abilities to provide the services of the POU; and,
  • the recording and reporting of incidents involving a POU.