(Quebec) The Quebec government intends to give more powers to the “police of the police” so that it can launch investigations into alleged police blunders more freely, and even at the request of citizens.
Bill 18, tabled Wednesday by Geneviève Guilbault, provides that the Bureau of Independent Investigations (BEI) will now have the power to initiate an investigation simply when “is informed of an allegation relating to a criminal offense committed by a police officer “.
If the bill is adopted, the police forces will also have to inform the BEI “without delay” of any allegation of a crime affecting one of its police officers.
The tabling of the bill comes as the BEI has launched three investigations into police officers from the Police Department of Quebec City (SPVQ) after the media coverage of several violent videos.
“We are expanding and strengthening the powers of the BEI. They are going to do more investigations than they are doing now, ”explained the Minister of Public Security.
Currently, the BEI is launching an investigation when a police intervention results in an injury or death. But some of the violent interventions that have surfaced in recent days in Quebec have not involved injuries or deaths.
In these very specific cases, the BEI launched two investigations at the request of the SPVQ, which estimated after analysis that the police officer involved in the two interventions would have committed a criminal act.
But this way of doing things has long been decried by citizen groups. The League of Rights and Freedoms denounced in a press release no later than Tuesday that “the BEI cannot launch an investigation on the basis of information provided by the witness of an event involving a police force”.
Bill 18 therefore allows the BEI to launch an investigation on the basis of simple allegations by a citizen. The minister specified that these changes were not the result of the wave of denunciations in Quebec against the police.
The bill had been in the boxes for months, she said, and stems from the report of the Advisory Committee on Police Reality, tabled last May.