Too many internal errors led to Greater Sudbury Police Service's high rate of dismissed sexual assault cases, as revealed in a Globe & Mail article investigative series, said the city's top cop.
Human error, internal missteps, a “coding error” and unconscious biases are among those internal errors, said Chief Paul Pedersen.
In filing reports of sexual assault, Statistics Canada provides certain options with which police can close cases, he said. Either they are solved, they are open and pending, or they are unfounded.
“When a situation arises where there isn't enough evidence to bring a case to court, police are faced with the situation how to classify that case at that point in time,” Pedersen said at a press conference on Sept. 20. “And, in this case, many of the cases were being designated as unfounded, when in actuality, they should have been designated as open and requires more information, if and when it does come forward.”
Greater Sudbury Police have termed it as a “coding error” that contributed to 33 per cent of nearly 400 dismissed sexual assault cases being classified as "unfounded." He said it also boiled down to a flaw in internal checks and balances in closing those cases.
“It's the individual choice of the officer to determine which designation they give the case when closing it,” he said. “What we found internally, was we didn't have one person approving the closure of the cases. Information would come in in fragmented pieces, and different supervisors would approve different pieces, instead of one supervisor approving the complete case.
Immediately, we recognized this flaw once we took a hard look at it, and immediately we started to work to improve that situation.”
In further explaining the reason for the high number of “unfounded” sexual assault cases, Staff Sgt. Jordan Buchanan said an officer, in an attempt to show the case is concluded and not going further because there's nowhere else to go with it, would often use the word "unfounded," because that was one of the only a few options given when investigating the case.
“These cases were being marked as unfounded in order to get them coded, when they should have been marked as unsubstantiated, but because of the options available, they were being thrown into the unfounded category,” he said. “Moving forward, those kinds of cases will be designated as open and pending, even though there are no other investigative categories to pursue."
After the information of the dismissed sexual assault cases came to light, GSPS created a Sexual Assault Review Team to review how cases were handled.
As part of that team are representatives from the GSPS and N'Swakamok Native Friendship Centre, Sudbury and Area Victim Services, VOICES for Women and Violence Intervention and Prevention Program (both from Health Sciences North), YWCA Genevra House and the Centre Victoria pour femmes.
As a result of an internal review, GSPS has managed to take the 33 per cent of “unfounded” cases and and cut it down to about five per cent, Buchanan said. Unfounded cases tend to be third-party complaints. And example would be if a teacher walks down the hallway at school and overhears students talking about a possible sexual abuse. The teacher calls the police, who investigate, only to find out the students were talking about a movie they had seen.
That case would be filed as unfounded.
An example of a case that would mistakenly be filed as unfounded would be if the parent of a child, who isn't old enough to speak, calls police because they think there may have been some sort of sexual abuse happening. However, the child is too young to be able to communicate, nothing came out of a medical examination, there is no physical evidence, and there are no witnesses.
“Those cases shouldn't be closed as unfounded, because we don't know that it didn't happen,” Buchanan said. “We have no other avenues to pursue at that time. They should be filed as unsubstantiated, meaning they continue forever, because some day a witness may come forward or evidence might be presented.”
Greater Sudbury Police isn't stopping at fixing the poor coding of those cases that should have been marked as open and pending, but were instead marked as unfounded, Buchanan said.
“We've taken those cases, reviewed them, and looked for any deficiencies in the investigation, such as witnesses or suspects not being interviewed by police, and we're looking at correcting those errors to properly conclude those cases,” he said. “In cases we feel that need to be reopened, we've assigned a single detective to investigate, and that will be the detective's only job. In cases where charges can be laid, they will be laid and will go before the courts.”
For now, Greater Sudbury Police is looking only at cases closes as unfounded between 2010 and 2016, he said.
“We aren't sure of the reception of the victims in these cases, but we're sure it will be positive,” he said. “Going further back than that, we aren't sure of the challenges both in the investigation and in court.
“We are also limited in our resources. This is a very extensive review. It began in March and concluded in early June, but the work still continues. We're projecting the final outcome — where every case is reviewed, and all cases that need to be reopened are reopened, charges that need to be laid are laid, and getting those cases before the courts — could take another year.”
Nancy Horan, manager of the violence intervention program at Health Sciences North and Voices for Women, said the Globe & Mail investigation shed light on the enormous barriers survivors face.
“We trust the work of the review committee will improve organizational accountability and processes responding to sexual assault complaints," Horan said. "We are encouraged that the committee will provide support to police as they take the strategic steps to reduce barriers that lead to the flaws in the investigation process that lead to these high rates.”
Moving forward, the review will continue, Buchanan said. GSPS will work with its community partners on an external review, as well.
“There are lessons and insight we can gather from the advocacy groups that I see a huge value in,” he said. As that work moves forward, we will make changes and adjustments as we go.”
