Winnipeg police need civilian commission: inner-city group

May 8, 2006
CBC News

A group of inner-city residents in Winnipeg is calling on municipal politicians to create a civilian police commission to oversee the work of the city's police force.

Tom Simms, co-director of the Community Education Development Association, says many people want to know how the police make decisions on policy issues.

"I don't know how policy gets formed right now," he said. "Is it the mayor that makes the policy, or is it the [city's] protection committee? Is there a sort of strategy around community police? Who and how do you go about shaping that policy?"

"Some of these questions, I think, would be a lot more clear if there was a mechanism like a police commission to do those kinds of things."

A civilian commission could also play a vital role when a member of the public has a complaint about police, Simms told CBC News Monday.

Currently, complaints about police officers in Winnipeg and on other municipal forces are handled by the Law Enforcement Review Agency (LERA), a provincially mandeated, independent body.

However, some groups have complained the LERA system takes too long and is difficult to navigate, or that it's awkward to make complaints about police misconduct to LERA's commissioner, who is a retired RCMP officer. More than half of all complaints filed with LERA last year were abandoned or withdrawn.