Quebec police are refusing to answer questions from the oversight body investigating civilian deaths and serious injuries during police interventions. This is after
[Police] unions also challenged the obligation for officers to meet with … investigators. They argued that those rules infringed on their members’ constitutional rights to stay silent and not incriminate themselves.
It’s part of a national trend:
in British Columbia, police officers rarely co-operate with the Independent Investigations Office …, while they often only partly co-operate with independent oversight bodies in other provinces.
Our section 11c allows for the defendant’s right not to give testimony directly against oneself,
but it doesn’t allow for one defendant not to give testimony against another – just, via section 13, indemnification against that witness in a separate proceeding when previous testimony is compelled (via lack of a right to silence when potentially incriminating others).
So, cops don’t have to testify against themselves, but they don’t get to be silent. And they get indemnification if they do speak up, so it seems a dumb move not to say “yeah, me and Bobby totally beat the hell outta that guy” and use that section-13 clause to skate.
Hmm. But they’d be bounced out of the force on Ethics, but I guess at that point they’re no longer cops anyway; just thugs (and if you’re all ACAB about it, you need to know why that’s toxic).
I don’t know enough about law to say whether those excepts are the only rules that would be relevant in this scenario.
It is clear that police officers and unions are systematically undermining public safety through legal appeals and non-compliance.
Because they fundamentally believe that laws do not apply to them … they only enforce, not obey.