By David Carrigg
Staff writer

A Police Complaint Commission policy not to reveal which municipal police forces employ disciplined officers listed in its annual report has been challenged by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

Murray Mollard, executive director of the BCCLA, said the Police Complaint Commission is relying on an outdated privacy commissioner ruling to protect the identities of municipal police forces.

"It’s anomalous that there is a full level of reporting when a case goes to public hearing, which is rare, but it is much more limited in other situations," said Mollard, who plans to raise the issue when a special parliamentary committee is formed next month to overview the first three years of the Police Complaint Commission’s operation.

Last week, the Courier asked whether Vancouver Police Department officers were among the disciplined officers listed in the commissioner’s 2000 annual report, which didn’t name the officers but included details of punishment for acts including inappropriate use of pepper spray and using police powers to solve a personal argument.

One of the cases mentioned in the annual report—in which an officer sprayed a city worker with pepper spray after a personal argument—was identifiable because it was reported by the media last year. The officer was suspended without pay for three days.

Barbara Murphy, deputy police complaint commissioner, said while details of the cases and punishment constitute public information, names of police departments offending officers belong to do not. "You can’t get that specific information from us; it’s private information," Murphy said.

The commission office will reveal, however, that 173 complaints were made against Vancouver cops last year, 10 of them resulting in disciplinary action. In the first quarter of 2001, there were 42 complaints, resulting in four disciplinary actions.

Murphy said the commissioner does not reveal names of offending cops or their police forces because of a 1994 ruling by the privacy commissioner, prompted by a challenge from a journalist.

However, Mollard points out that the Police Complaint Commission was created four years later under a different police and privacy act.

"It’s important that there is still a feedback loop to the general public that ensures some transparency and accounting for problems that have arisen and been resolved," said Mollard, adding social justice groups or people who study police behavior would benefit from knowing what sort of incidents were occurring in the 12 municipal police departments covered by the commissioner.

Mollard said it’s not so important to know the name of the offending officer.

"There is an argument that you shouldn’t publicly shame officers, but there is clearly no such argument with respect to revealing the department," he said.