Sexual Assault & Sexual Misconduct in the CF

[daftandbarmy]

That's being rolled out nationally, it's not an Esquimalt initiative.

Even better

 

[lenaitch]

That would almost certainly not be necessary. A PO to a police service for an existing police file will only furnish documents or data… that are already in the hands of a police service. Any intrusion on the reasonable expectation of privacy by the state has already happened. There’s no articulable reasonable expectation of privacy that precludes one police service sharing the fruits of its investigation with another for valid law enforcement purposes. Applicable provincial and federal privacy legislation already allow that sharing; federally, for instance. It’s 8(2)(e) of the Privacy Act.

I’ve seen judicial authorizations against police services in, broadly three occasions:

1) Seeking police records that are not fruits of an investigation and were collected for some less intrusive purpose, such as a production order for a police employee’s security clearance package when they’re being investigated for corruption

2) Seeking a Search Warrant to expand the scope of data that can be reviewed on an electronic device. For example, a police service seizes a device and examines its contents for evidence of organized retail theft, and unexpectedly finds data showing evidence of murder in another jurisdiction. That other jurisdiction would get a copy of the data but not look at it til they get a new warrant with expanded scope.

3) The niche case that fills me with rage, police receiving proactive and voluntary child porn disclosures from groups like NCMEC, which contain IP addresses. Police will lock it away and obtain a production order to serve on themselves to bring that voluntary disclosure through judicial review due to the presence of IP addresses, which in Bykovets the SCC found to attract a reasonable expectation of privacy.

And, once, a bank overdelivered in response to my production order and sent me copies of bank drafts I had not yet asked for and didnmt yet have grounds to. When I saw them I realized immediately they were good evidence, so I locked them in my cabinet, and a few days later triumphantly served my Staff Sergeant with a copy of the search warrant I had obtained for my own filing cabinet. That was funny and dumb.

But anyway, I’ve both shared and received investigation information with various other police services, municipal, provincial and federal. It’s generally no issue, just know the section of applicable law permitting the sharing.

Edit to add: I just remembered an instructor's line he said in a Fraud course: 'the reason for seizin'.

sure you can share the investigation- and maybe you covered it, but sharing it for the purposes of discipline and using the documentation? How does that fit in? That’s where I would be a little lost

maybe it’s nothing

Part of the reason I raised it was I've never been quite clear on how the courts consider military police and the scope of their authority and I'm not very familiar with their scope of authority under the NDA. Information exchanged between different public police members for law enforcement purposes is much clearer but, as Booter says, public police sharing law enforcement information with MPs for non-criminal investigative matters might be more problematic

No necessarily a direct example, but when I was involved in investigative matters that flowed from regulatory enforcement, such as business/financial regulations, healthcare, etc. it was common to obtain judicial authorization because some of the information a person might disclose to their regulator would be compelled (i.e. sumbission of financial statements in order to get a permit) and disclosed not for the purpose of a criminal investigation. Again, not a direct comparison. It is somewhat similar to the practice of taking a cautioned statement for break and enter then using it in a homicide investigation. The jeopardy of the reason changed. It might not make the statement de facto inadmissible, but why take the chance?

The Court's general view is that judicial authorization is the default approach to satisfying Charter Sec. 8. At the risk of raising the bar unnecessarily high, for all it costs, I think I would still I would still do it if, for no other reason than to cut off an avenue of defence.

 

[Jarnhamar]

I might be getting too old, but would the OC care about this and/or do anything about it?

If there's career implications I'd say yes. I've sat through orders and other briefs from OCs that sound more like business meetings than military operations. Maybe rampant sexual misconduct investigations is bad for the CV and LinkedIn?

If that actually happened I'm guessing that SNCO should be in a world of hurt IMHO...

It happens a lot. The outgoing commandant from CFLRS was talking about it and how they're charging instructors for it. I've seen it a number of times myself.