New category of complaint aimed at helping RCMP track discrimination by officers

Police and Public Trust, a project of the CBC News Atlantic investigative unit, scrutinizes the largely off-limits police complaint and discipline systems across the region. Journalists are using access to information laws and, in some cases, court challenges to obtain discipline records and data.

Eight years ago, a woman filed a complaint about two New Brunswick RCMP constables in Moncton. She accused them of having "an improper and racist attitude" and of discriminating against her and her husband during an investigation into a stolen truck and trailer. 

The couple's allegations aren't described in detail in the complaint. But the RCMP's description of the complaint itself, contained in data sent to CBC News, uses a derogatory term to describe the man's race, while also noting the complaints against both officers were "unsupported."

A few years later, in 2021, an investigation supported an allegation of improper attitude made against a different New Brunswick RCMP officer, a constable in the Oromocto detachment, who said that "all natives were wiped out of Newfoundland." It's not clear what, if any, action was taken against the officer.

Then, in 2022, a constable in the Moncton area was accused of laughing at the complainant's son with special needs. That complaint was still under investigation when the data was sent to CBC.

They are three of at least 52 allegations of bias or discrimination by RCMP officers across New Brunswick between 2015 and 2022.

But for years, the force's complaint system didn't have an internal system to track complaints related to bias.

Instead, these allegations, along with others across the country, were often put into a category called "improper attitude," which can include behaviour considered to be rude or abusive. This made it difficult to accurately track just how often the public complained about discrimination by RCMP officers.

The RCMP added a new complaint category, called bias, as of April 1.

It's meant to capture allegations of discrimination related to "race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics, disability, or a conviction for which a pardon has been granted or a record suspended."

In New Brunswick, where Indigenous leaders have called for changes to the way the RCMP polices their communities, Chief Allan Polchies sees value in the public being able to know more about these complaints.

"You want to be able to track the employee or the officer," said Polchies, of Sitansisk (St. Mary's First Nation). 

"If the officer has been called for five calls, and they're doing the same thing and it's not working, then they have that data. I'm not sure how performance reviews work with police officers or how they're promoted, but I'm guessing if there's enough complaints against them, if you're doing something wrong, and it's not being corrected, then that's not a service to the communities."

CBC obtained details from eight years' worth of complaint files through the access to information system as part of the ongoing Police and Public Trust project, which takes the public inside the often-opaque systems of police complaints and discipline across Atlantic Canada.