Police officers in Atlantic Canada are the subject of hundreds of complaints each year.

They come from members of the public and from internal sources within their own police departments. Allegations include neglect of duty, excessive force and racial profiling, to name a few examples. 

The vast majority of the allegations against police officers are deemed unfounded or dismissed.

And in many cases, the public is allowed to know very little about how and why that happened.

That's why CBC's Atlantic investigative unit has launched a project called Police and Public Trust, which will take the public inside the opaque systems of police complaints and discipline across the region.

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It comes at a time when police across North America are under scrutiny, with calls to "defund" the police growing in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd.

As police budgets continue to grow, Kevin Walby thinks police agencies should face growing accountability.

Kevin Walby of the University of Winnipeg and director of the university's Centre for Access to Information and Justice says the public deserves access to information about police conduct. (Kevin Walby)

"Given the kinds of amazing or awesome powers of life and death that police have, the public deserves access to information regarding their conduct," said Walby, who teaches at the University of Winnipeg and serves as director of the Centre for Access to Information and Justice. 

Complaints handled behind closed doors

For years, details of police complaints in New Brunswick, including complaints filed with the New Brunswick Police Commission, have only become public if the complaint can't be resolved behind closed doors.

The public process, called arbitration, was the result of just five per cent of 449 allegations made against municipal police officers between 2012 and 2019, according to data provided by municipal police forces in 2020. The commission only handles complaints involving municipal police agencies in New Brunswick because the RCMP has a separate complaint process.

During that same timeframe, nearly one in three allegations regarding an officer's conduct was marked for "no further action" because of insufficient evidence or because it was deemed to be unfounded, the data provided by police agencies shows.

Another 22 per cent were dismissed because the allegation was deemed to be frivolous or not made in good faith. 

The allegations included abuse of authority, improper use and care of firearms, and discreditable conduct. Some complaints include more than one allegation.

Exact details of complaints unknown

Tom Stamatakis is the president of the Canadian Police Association, which represents 60,000 serving police officers in departments across the country.

He said the complaint systems in Canada are "very effective," though having different processes in different provinces, with more than one agency sometimes probing a complaint, can make things confusing for both officers and the public.

Based on the number of complaints that are substantiated across the country, and the number of interactions police have with the public in a given year, Stamatakis argued there are few officers with "persistent disciplinary issues or conduct issues." 

"The focus often is just on that police officer," he said. 

"But we should be looking beyond that. What contributed to that police officer having an interaction that resulted in this controversy?"

The CBC News Atlantic investigative unit’s Police and Public Trust project will take the public inside the opaque systems of police complaints and discipline across the region. (Photo illustration: Duk Han Lee/CBC)

In most cases in New Brunswick, the exact details of the allegations made against police officers remain unknown, nor is it clear why some complainants' allegations have been deemed "frivolous" or not in good faith.

There's also no way to tell how many unique officers in the province have faced complaints, or whether any officers have faced multiple complaints over time.

Court battles

That's how the process works in one province, but gaps in what the public is allowed to know exist across the region. 

CBC reporters filed access to information requests with 19 municipal police departments in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and with the provincial police force in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Requests were also filed with the three municipal police agencies on Prince Edward Island, which have only been subject to access to information laws since April 2019. That province's police commission posts some details of almost all of its complaints online, unlike other Atlantic provinces.

CBC has also asked the RCMP for details of complaints filed against officers in the four divisions across the Atlantic region. 

The requests to the municipal police forces ask for data that goes back more than a decade.

"These are hugely important records for the public to be able to have access to because public police are really the only personnel representing the state in our society who have a kind of right to use violence," Walby said.

So far, in two provinces, CBC News has had to go to court to fight for the information.

In New Brunswick, CBC is in the early stages of its court case involving records held by the New Brunswick Police Commission, including details of investigations into complaints.

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The court battle in Nova Scotia has produced records that have never been made public before. 

The information obtained by CBC shows most public complaints in that province are ruled unsubstantiated, and some officers have been repeatedly disciplined.

Later this week, as part of the project Police and Public Trust, CBC will make those records available to the public.

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