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This training document shared by The Greater Sudbury Police Service was heavily redacted. CBC was able to obtain more details after appealing the police decision to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario.
Radio-Canada
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CBC investigation reveals errors made by members of the Security Service Greater Sudbury Police (GSPS) impacted 13 child pornography cases, including one case where errors led to charges being dropped.
These details were made public following a decision by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, approximately two years after a request for access to information.
In December 2021, a court in Sudbury heard that a suspect's constitutional rights had not been respected by police, which had also happened in another case of sexual exploitation of a child the previous year and that it was a systemic practice of the SPGS.
CBC then requested more information on these errors and on the number of cases concerned.
The police had only indicated that the errors had been addressed during training to correct them and that they were not serious enough to require disciplinary measures.
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Detailed documents were finally obtained by CBC, after the intervention of the Commissioner Information and Privacy Protection Authority of Ontario.
They reveal that' The Internet Child Exploitation Unit routinely asked suspects to give up passwords to their computers or other electronic devices before they could speak to a lawyer .
SPGS now says errors also include failure to bring a suspect to court as soon as possible and delays in disclosing information to defense counsel.
< p class="StyledBodyHtmlParagraph-sc-48221190-4 hnvfyV">Top SPGS officials still don't seem to recognize that what was happening was wrong, believes Michael Lacy, the defense attorney who was the first to highlight the errors of the investigators in court.
Attorney Michael Lacy was the first to raise concerns about the investigative practices of the Grand Police Sudbury, 2020.
He says police officers occasionally make mistakes in good faith and ask questions that they should not have asked.
He adds, however, that he has never seen in 25 years of career such systemic practice elsewhere than in Sudbury.
We are committed to rebuilding public trust, said SPGS Strategic Operations Inspector Robert Norman. We can't undo the things that have been done, but we can do better in the future.
M . Norman adds that the police service is working to become more transparent.
Inspector Robert Norman says there was no ignorance or negligence in the 13 cases affected by errors during the investigation.
The inspector said he was not surprised by the errors made during investigations, because case law is constantly evolving and we don't know what we don't know.
He adds that errors have a devastating impact on the morale of investigators. They do not want to feel responsible for the release of a person for a purely technical reason.
Based on a report by CBC's Erik White
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