Wait. Police lawyers write up officers' notes for them?

From a partial transcript of Ontario Ombudsman and former Special Investigation Unit Director Andre Marin's interview on CBC yesterday regarding how systemic obstruction from the police will affect the Sammy Yatim investigation: 

"The director of the SIU has written 82 times to the Chief of Toronto Police, reporting issues of evidence tampering on the scene, failure to notify the SIU of an incident, one police lawyer representing multiple officers, police lawyers writing the notes for the officers - you know the police lawyer wasn't on scene."

Although Mr. Marin was talking about the Toronto Police, his remarks made me remember the Robert Dziekanski incident. 

The four RCMP officers in the 2007 police-slaying of Dziekanski are on trial for perjury because they all had nearly identical but absurdly inaccurate "notes", as Paul Pritchard's video eventually revealed. 
They all maintained that Dziekanski came at them screaming and brandishing a stapler, that they had to wrestle him to the ground, that to varying degrees they feared for their lives. 
At the Braidwood Inquiry, Justice Thomas Braidwood played Pritchard's video frame by frame as they read from their prepared notes to the accompaniment of muffled laughter from spectators in the courtroom.

So were those "notes" the RCMP's version of "one police lawyer representing multiple officers, police lawyers writing the notes for the officers" ?
Is that why they were so similar, so resolutely CYA, and yet so preposterously wrong?
I know the officers were specifically asked if they were "coached" for their testimony - a charge they have all denied -  but did anyone think to ask junior RCMP Constable Bill Bentley at his perjury trial last month if he had any input into the writing of his notes at all?
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Aug 3 Update - relates only to Ontario
Andre Marin : Police-Involved Deaths : The Need for Reform

"The SIU's practices around delayed officer interviews also served to undermine the regulatory requirement that witness officers be segregated to insulate their evidence from outside influence. Given that witness officers were usually permitted to leave an incident scene and that long periods went by before they were interviewed, the potential for conscious or unconscious tailoring of evidence was substantially increased. This risk was also compounded by the fact that many officers spoke with counsel before writing their notes and before speaking with the SIU, and quite often, the same counsel represented all officers involved in an incident, increasing the chance of contamination of their recollection of events, since lawyers are bound by the rules of professional conduct to share information among clients in a joint retainer situation."

Ontario Ombudsman 2012-2013 Annual Report 

In April 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada heard an appeal of an Ontario Court of Appeal case dealing with the issue of police association lawyers vetting officers’ notes before submitting them to SIU ... The Ontario court ruled in 2011 that officers cannot have a lawyer vet their notes. The Supreme Court’s decision is pending. ... 

Later on in the report he notes : 

" ... officers refuse to answer questions about whether they consulted with a lawyer before writing their notes"

In March 2013 at a speech at Carleton University, Andre Marin again called for legislation to bolster the SIU and "prohibit police lawyers representing multiple officers and interfering with notes."
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Ontario Ombudsman and former SIU Director on Sammy Yatim investigation

Yesterday on CBC Metro Morning, Ontario Ombudsman and former Director of the Special Investigations Unit Andre Marin spoke about the SIU investigation into the Toronto Police shooting death of 18 year old Sammy Yatim on an empty streetcar and the systemic lack of police co-operation with the SIU.
Excerpted transcript : 

CBC : The Chief of Police has said that he and his officers will cooperate fully with the SIU. Yesterday Mike McCormick the head of the police union said that his offices always cooperate and collaborate with the SIU.  

Marin : The cooperation of the police with an SIU investigation is the exception and not the norm. When you hear the police say we always cooperate, it rings hollow. We've done in-depth investigations, two reports. The director of the SIU has written 82 times to the Chief of Toronto Police, reporting issues of evidence tampering on the scene, failure to notify the SIU of an incident, one police lawyer representing multiple officers, police lawyers writing the notes for the officers - you know the police lawyer wasn't on scene. That's not co-operation and all these 82 letters haven't been answered. Last year - we reported in an annual report we released a few weeks ago - last year the director wrote 19 letters all of which have not been answered. 

CBC : Does the fact that this is an incredibly public investigation, in part because this incident was caught not just on one but on multiple videos, change that? 

Marin : I think there's a greater degree of question. As well the incident depicted raises issues. But you know if I recall correctly during the G20 SIU investigation, Chief Blair was on your show promoting the fiction that the videotape of Adam Nobody had been tampered with until the director of the SIU called his bluff. Now is that co-operation or is that undermining the investigation? And the worst part here is - I don't oversee the Toronto Police Service; I do oversee the SIU, I oversee the provincial government. Provincial government committed to strengthening the role of the SIU to make sure the evidence they get is untampered and it's obtained readily and early because SIU's conclusion will only be as good as the evidence that it's gathered. The province agreed to bring change but then from documents we found changed their mind because of "vehement police opposition". And that's a direct quote from the ministry's correspondence. So you know it's all great to see these commitments of 180 degree change in direction in co-operation with the SIU, but the police have to stop playing cat-and-mouse games and the SIU needs to be able to do its job independently and without distractions.  

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Stacy Bonds "special constables" cleared

The Ontario Provincial Police has finished investigating the Ottawa Police Service for their assault of Stacy Bonds and announced no charges will be laid. You're shocked, I'm sure.

"I would like to thank the Ontario Provincial Police for conducting this investigation in an objective, thorough and professional way," said Ottawa Police Chief Vern White in a news release.

The Ottawa police officer Steven Desjourdy who cut off Bonds' shirt and bra was charged with sexual assault by the the Ontario Special Investigations Unit in March; the SIU however has no jurisdiction over the other "special constables" involved who are not officially police officers.

When the case came before Justice Richard Lajoie in October 2010, he described Bonds' arrest as "unlawful", "appalling", "a travesty" with "no reason apart from vengence and malice", and "an extremely serious breach of Ms. Bonds rights".
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G20 - Police oversight

Oversight - noun
1) the action of overseeing something
2) an omission, the failure to do something

Dorian Barton was taking a picture of police horses in the park at the G20 summit in downtown Toronto last summer when he was suddenly knocked to ground from behind with a riot shield, beaten with a baton breaking his shoulder, and stomped in the face. He was then dragged off by his broken right arm and detained without medical treatment for the first five of a total of 30 hours in detention, after which he was charged with "obstructing a police officer". The Crown dropped the charges against him at the same time it dropped all the bullshit charges against everyone else.

Ontario's Special Investigations Unit, the civilian agency charged with investigating "police actions resulting in serious injury, sexual assault or death", is reopening for the third time an investigation into allegations the Toronto police officer pictured here was one of seven who took part in the vicious assault on Barton. The photographer who took this pic is willing to testify he saw the officer blindside Barton with his shield and strike him as he lay on the ground before other officers joined in. He has provided seven photos of the assault.

SIU dropped its two previous investigations into the case in January because eleven police witnesses, one of whom was the officer's G20 roommate and two of whom were his supervisors, declined to identify him. SIU director Ian Scott reopened it today after Toronto Police Chief Blair promised to provide the name of the employee who was able to identify the subject officer.

WTF?
I'm pretty sure if me and six of my friends were caught on film beating the crap out of you, the cops would not drop the case because my boss and my roommate declined to cough up my name to go along with my photo.

According to the Ontario Attorney General to whom the SIU reports, the SIU exonerates the officer in 97% of the cases it does pursue :

"The fact that the SIU overwhelmingly clears officers should be seen by the [public] as an endorsement of good policing."

However, in Oversight Unseen, a 2008 report on the SIU, Ontario Ombudsmen André Marin saw it differently :

"[T]he Ministry of the Attorney General has relied on the SIU to soothe police and community sensibilities and to ward off controversy. But in doing so, it has also overstepped the bounds of independent governance. The Director’s performance is subjectively evaluated and rewarded, compromising the SIU’s structural integrity and independence.

Its credibility as an independent investigative agency is further undermined by the predominant presence and continuing police links of former police officials within the SIU. It is so steeped in police culture that it has, at times, even tolerated the blatant display of police insignia and police affiliation."

[T]he SIU often ... adopts an impotent stance in the face of police challenge. Delays in police providing notice of incidents, in disclosing notes, and in submitting to interviews are endemic. Rather than vigorously inquiring into and documenting delays and other evidence of police resistance, the SIU deals with issues of police non-co-operation as isolated incidents.

Police interviews are rarely held within the regulatory time frames, and are all too often postponed – for weeks, sometimes even months. The SIU will not inconvenience officers or police forces by interviewing officers off duty. When it encounters overt resistance from police officials, the SIU pursues a low-key diplomatic approach that flies under the public radar. If disagreement cannot be resolved, the SIU more often than not simply accepts defeat."

"The SIU more often than not simply admits defeat." Good lord.

The current SIU director Ian Scott was appointed just before that report came out.
In February the Toronto Star ran a series based on 300 letters Scott sent to police forces over a 14-month period beginning in January 2009. They detail "his mounting frustration at not being able to hold officers accountable", including the burning of evidence before he got to see it, and being generally ignored by the Ontario police forces.
Presumably this is why he is giving interviews about this case to the press, despite the fact SIU Regulation 13 forbids it.

Rally in Toronto on Saturday for a public inquiry into G20 police riots

Meanwhile, out here in BC, the local media was pleased to bits last week to report that in response to Justice Braidwood  recommendations following from the police killing of Robert Dziekanski in 2007, we will be getting our own civilian police-oversight agency modelled on the SIU. And just like the SIU, the Independent Investigations Office will also report to BC's Attorney General, not the Ombudsman as Braidwood had wisely suggested.

Greg Klein at TheStraight :

[I]t was the AG’s Crown attorneys who exonerated the four Mounties involved in Dziekanski’s death. That was what led to Braidwood’s inquiry in the first place.

It gets worse. The government added that incidents or complaints involving IIO staff will be investigated by B.C.’s Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner. Almost all senior positions at the OPCC are staffed by former police officers.

An exception is police complaint commissioner Stan Lowe. But Lowe is a former Crown attorney and member of the criminal justice branch executive management that unanimously decided to exonerate the four RCMP officers involved in Robert Dziekanski’s Taser-related death. It was Lowe who made the infamous December 2008 announcement that the five Taser shocks inflicted on Dziekanski were “reasonable and necessary".

And so it goes ...
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