Of the 3,000 complaints against Ontario police, two-thirds involve officer conduct

Superior Morning6:25Police Complaints

Would the way we tlak and text online be affecting our relationsh ip with police officers? The director of Ontario's Independent Review board thinks so.

The Ontario Independent Police Review Director says of the approximately 3,000 complaints he receives annually, nearly two-thirds are about officer conduct, which is broadly referred to as incivility.

It's an issue of "communication, communication, communication", said Gerry McNeilly during a visit to Thunder Bay on Tuesday to speak to that city's police services board.

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Many of the complaints are against officers who have zero to seven years on the job and "they speak, as half of my staff do, in short sentences", a function of the years they've spent texting, and emailing, suggestedMcNeilly.

It's a form of communication which doesn't always translate well in face-to-face encounters, such as a traffic stop.

"You say something like 'You were speeding! Why were you speeding?'There's a power structure and order that's being given, as opposed to 'Hi. Do you know why I stopped you?'," said McNeilly.

Many of the complainants tell him "if the officer approached me differently, if the officer didn't yell at me, if the officer didn't embarrass me, it would have been different. I wouldn't have filed this complaint," he said.

It's an issue that is only exacerbated by the increasing diversity of both the population and the province's police forces.

Respect but 'lack of understanding'

"There is sometimes, in my opinion, not a lack of respect, but a lack of understanding."

McNeilly said he was surprised to learn the Ontario Police College does not emphasizecommunication, and that's why he is encouraging individual police chiefs and forces to spend more training time on the subject.

It's also why he's a strong advocate of what he calls Customer Service Resolutions, a type of mediation early in the complaint process.

This form of resolutioncan involve both the officer and the complainant reflecting on their behaviour, said Thunder Bay Police Chief J.P. Levesque.

"We're only human as well, and sometimes our officers can go offside and not act as professionally as they should and we try to ensure that people have the voice to say 'I don't appreciate the way I was treated' and then we deal with it through a number of resolution methods," he said

Levesque said the Thunder Bay force is tackling the issue by reminding members it's about "common sense" andcommon courtesy, and by offering diversity training to help officers learn about other cultures "and that helps us avoid a lot of situations as well."

The OIPRD received 27 complaints about the Thunder Bay force in 2014 to 2015. Thirteen were screened out of the process, one was withdrawn and 14 requiredfurther investigation.