FOR the third time this summer, and possibly the last time ever, West Vancouver Police are being seconded to investigate an outside police force.
The WVPD announced Tuesday it had sent officers to look into an Aug. 22 Burnaby RCMP arrest in which a woman was injured while being taken into custody.
"As a result of their investigation, the female was apprehended under the Mental Health Act," according to a press release from the Burnaby detachment. "She suffered an injury to her arm while being apprehended and was treated for that and committed for psychiatric assessment."
Anytime a suspect is killed or injured in RCMP custody, or when Mounties are accused of criminal wrongdoing, an outside police force is called in for an independent investigation. The cases often end up on the desk of the West Vancouver Police Department because it is one of a handful of municipal forces in the province that can run the investigation free of any perceived proRCMP bias.
Other large municipal forces, Delta, New Westminster, Victoria, Abbotsford and Vancouver also share in the load of police-involved investigations.
Municipal police chiefs have frequently criticized the process as a drain on their own policing resources, and critics have long-complained it is inappropriate to have cops investigating cops.
But that process is coming to an end as the province is in final preparations to launch its newly created Independent Investigations Office. The IIO will be a civilian-led agency that takes over all investigations of police incidents in British Columbia that result in death or serious harm. That agency is expected to be up and running Sept. 10, meaning this could be one of the last times police will be asked to investigate other police in B.C. The office will use former police officers who have been out of law enforcement for at least five years to lead investigations at first, but the plan is to have it fully staffed by civilians in the future.
The province had hoped to have the IIO taking cases in 2011, but getting the agency off the ground has been slow.
The IIO announced two weeks ago that it had negotiated a memorandum of understanding with the RCMP, the province's 11 municipal forces, the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Police Service, and the Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police, which it said should pave the way for smooth investigations in the future.
In June, West Vancouver constables were dispatched to Penticton to investigate an alleged assault of a suspect by an officer there. Less than a month later, local constables were in Williams Lake for a criminal probe into an RCMP member when a suspect ended up in hospital following an alleged police assault after a police chase.
In 2011, the force cleared Prince George RCMP of wrongdoing in another incident in which officers Tasered an 11-year-old who was believed to be carrying a knife.
