Police Accountability in Crisis Situations (From Police Powers in Canada: The Evolution and Practice of Authority, P 243-308, 1994, R.C. Macleod and David Schneiderman, eds. - See NCJ-157774)

• NCJ Number: 157786
• Author(s): J P Brodeur; L Viau
• Date Published: 1994
• Length: 66 pages
• Sale Source: University of Toronto Press
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: Canada

Annotation

This paper uses two incidents that occurred in Quebec, one in 1970 and the other in 1990 to illustrate some issues of Canadian police accountability in emergency situations.

Abstract

Using as an example, the Oka crisis, which involved police brutality and issues of native Indian rights, the paper explores issues of police accountability in emergency situations from the perspective of a political sociology of organization. These issues are also examined from a legal position. The authors argue that, in the aftermath of the Oka crisis, the responsible police organization held inquiries into the behavior of individual officers only as a result of unremitting external pressure. In fact, the issue was not individual, but organizational, accountability and police management failed to learn its lessons from the crisis in terms of reforming organizational culture. The authors conclude with recommendations for increasing police accountability in crisis conditions. 100 notes and 1 appendix