People are often upset, rightly so, and sometimes wrongly so, about the way in which they have been treated in police investigations. A lot of people who come to us after a particularly stressful interaction with the police want to file a complaint against the officer.
And you have a right to file a complaint to the RCMP Complaint Commissioner or the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner in British Columbia, on the basis of the treatment that you are given at the hands of the police.
But a lot of people also want to know if filing a complaint against the police will help their case.
The process through which police complaints work does not likely mean that you will receive a response and a determination on the police complaint at a relevant point in your case. Similarly, the outcome of a police complaint does not prevent prosecutors in BC from proceeding with a charge against you.
This is because police complaints are investigated by bodies that are independent of Crown Counsel. The Crown makes its decision based on a number of factors, including whether or not there is a substantial likelihood of conviction, and whether or not it is in the public interest to proceed with the case.
A substantiated police complaint, where an officer was found responsible for some sort of misconduct, may make it not in the public interest to proceed with the case, but not always.
For example, if an officer swears at you, or calls you a name, this may result in the police officer being found responsible for the misconduct, but it does not necessarily affect the integrity of the evidence that was collected in a criminal investigation.
Similarly, often in criminal investigations, the evidence that is collected is either collected by multiple officers, meaning that a successful complaint against one does not necessarily impact the validity of the case. Or, it is collected by civilian witnesses, who have nothing to do with police misconduct.
If an officer is involved in misconduct in a way that generates evidence against you, this could amount to an abuse of process, which could be used to exclude evidence. But prosecutors are not bound by the findings of the Police Complaint Commissioner, just like the Police Complaint Commissioner is not bound by the findings of a judge in court.
These are independent processes that have their own evidence, their own rules about what is and is not admissible, and their own determinations that are made at the end of the day.
Having a successful police complaint does not necessarily mean that your case is going to be successfully resolved in your favour.
There is also a downside risk to filing a police complaint. And that is that the officer who is the subject of the complaint is going to be notified of it. In a case where the officer may be very involved, they may act in a way to seek retribution. While this would certainly be improper, and unlawful conduct in its own right, just because they are not permitted to do it, does not mean that there is not a risk that this will occur.
After all, if you are filing a complaint about the conduct of an officer, it is probably because they did something you perceived to be wrong. So, can you trust the police officer to act properly once you have filed the complaint? Probably not.
The police complaints process takes a long time. It can often a lot longer than it takes for your cases to get to court. So, filing a police complaint may not necessarily result in any type of remedy in a criminal case or on a traffic ticket, because your case may be over and done with before your complaint is even heard and determined.
None of this is meant to discourage anybody who has a legitimate complaint against police for their conduct in an investigation. The police complaints process is an important part of the oversight of the police, who are given a lot of power in our legal system.
It is a word of caution to those who think that filing a complaint is going to necessarily result in their case being dismissed, or them being successful in a criminal charge or a traffic ticket. It is unfortunately just not that simple, and just not that fast.