Calgary Police Commission Investigates Sean Chu’s Handling of Historic Accusations – Calgary | The Canadian News

The Calgary Police Commission and the Calgary Police Service are hoping to learn how the police have handled sexual assault allegations against Coun over the decades. Sean Chu could have improved.

TO CBC News Report first disclosed the procedures of the Law Enforcement Review Board investigating allegations of wrongdoing with a minor when Chu was a CPS officer in 1997.

Commission chair Bonita Croft and CPS chief Mark Neufeld spoke after the commission’s public meeting Tuesday afternoon.

As a civil oversight body, the police commission will go through its director of public complaints to analyze the processes used to investigate complaints against officers and whether there are opportunities for improvement, “although it was a long time ago.”

“The review will allow us to see if there are any other issues, anything else that can be learned from this case and still can be acted on in the future to improve things for future cases of that kind,” Croft said.

The way allegations against a police officer were handled in the late 1990s has changed since then, the CPS chief said.

“What would happen is that we would have investigators from other police services who would go to other cities to conduct investigations, which takes a long time,” Neufeld said, adding that it would add to the existing workload of those investigators.

the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, whose mandate includes investigating “serious or sensitive allegations of police misconduct,” was created in 2008 after the promotion of the Alberta Police Chiefs Association, Neufeld said.

He said he would like investigations into police conduct to be more independent, and for the Chu incident to show why.

“What comes out very clearly is that people are uncomfortable with the idea of ​​the police investigating the police in serious cases like this,” the police chief said.

In an Oct. 20 statement, Neufeld said he had reviewed all documents related to the former CPS officer. The documentation included transcripts of disciplinary hearings, investigation records, and administrative courts.

On Tuesday, he said that getting those documents out of the archive was a “little challenge” as they predated the digitized CPS archive. And you are not sure which documents can be published due to publication bans or other confidentiality considerations.

“It’s an interesting question because you have to balance the public interest with the privacy interests of employees on employee issues like this,” said the CPS chief.

Neufeld previously confirmed that Chu had been convicted of conduct discredited under the Police Act in 2003 for the 1997 incident.

In his first speech to the media after the municipal elections, Chu told reporters last week that he and the girl met at a licensed establishment and that they “participated in some consensual touches” at their home. He also claimed that he did not know that she was a minor.

Chu also said that he had a letter of reprimand in his file that was later removed.

Neufeld said the expungement practice continues under the law.

Serious discipline remains on an officer’s record for five years. Less serious discipline records remain in an officer’s record for between one and three years, at the discretion of the chief.

“It is important to know that the deletion applies if there are no other entries in the officer’s discipline service record,” Neufeld clarified. “And the idea is an officer, if they got involved in an incident and it was unique and they were disciplined, they could rehabilitate themselves and they could overcome that problem.

“But if, during that period of time that the conviction was on your record, if it had a later entry, then that issue would remain or the earlier conviction would remain, and that would be to further the issues around progressive discipline. “

Croft also announced his departure from the commission on Tuesday, saying he made the decision weeks ago due to increased work commitments. The outgoing commission chairman said the decision would not affect the commission’s work to investigate police handling of the 1997 incident.

“The review that we made a statement about last week, which we are going to undertake to look at the process that was followed there to see what can be learned from that, if anything can be learned, will of course continue, whether or not whether I’m on commission or not. “