C-105 - Conduct Authority Decision

The Appellant, with other police officers, responded to a call regarding a stolen car being driven unsafely in their area. An attempt was made to have the vehicle stop but the vehicle instead fled from the police. A pursuit then occurred. The incident led to a Code of Conduct investigation. After a number of time extensions, the Appellant attended a conduct meeting related to two allegations against him. The Respondent established that the Appellant breached section 4.6 (Misuse of a Force Vehicle) and section 8.1 (False Reporting) of the Code of Conduct during the pursuit of the vehicle.  

On appeal, the Appellant submitted that he was denied procedural fairness in the appeal because he was denied an extension to make his appeal submission.

The Appellant also challenged the extensions granted to the Respondent to institute conduct measures. The Appellant believed that these extensions were granted based on a false premise and that the final extension was improper due to the previous extension having expired by the time of the final request.

The Appellant also argued that the Conduct Advisor improperly cross-examined him during the conduct meeting.

The Appellant further claimed that the Respondent should have resolved his actions through the performance process and not by Code of Conduct proceedings.  

Finally, the Appellant challenged the findings used to establish the two allegations. On the misuse of the Force vehicle, the Appellant argued that the situation was dynamic and the Respondent relied on the advantage of hindsight to find a contravention. For the second allegation, false reporting, the Appellant submitted that the stress of the moment led him to use inexact language but that it should not amount to misconduct. 

The ERC found that the denied extension to make an appeal submission was corrected by subsequent opportunities granted to the Appellant to include additional arguments.

The ERC also found no issue with the timeline extensions for imposing conduct measures. The RCMP Act granted the power to extend timelines retroactively and there were no clearly unreasonable findings in the assessment of the request for the extensions.

Regarding the Conduct Advisor’s role, the ERC found that this was a breach of procedural fairness but that the result of the conduct meeting was inevitable. The Notice of Conduct Meeting established that the conduct meeting was meant to be between the Appellant and Respondent. The Appellant, based on that Notice, had a legitimate expectation that the Conduct Advisor would not question him and was given no notice of any change prior to the meeting. As well, the Appellant was not granted the equal right to have a representative cross-examine witnesses on his behalf. However, the ERC found that the result would be inevitable as the questioning related to the Appellant’s knowledge of pursuit policy, which was established based on the record.

The ERC found that the Respondent’s decision to proceed through the conduct process, instead of the performance process, was not clearly unreasonable based on the procedural requirements.

As well, the ERC found that an appeal is not an opportunity to assess the evidence and the outcome anew. The ERC’s role is to review the decision under appeal and determine whether it is clearly unreasonable. The findings used to establish the two allegations were not found to be clearly unreasonable.

The ERC recommends that the appeal be dismissed.