When controversial OPP commissioner Julian Fantino stepped down at the end of July, his deputy commissioner Chris Lewis stepped up to fill the position. He was instrumental in creating the force's Aboriginal Policing Bureau and the lead in the Caledonia operation for the last three years. He has studied Aboriginal Government and Law and is a graduate of the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia. The Enterprise's Garett Williams spoke with him this week.
GW - Under your direction, where do you want to take the OPP?
CL - I want to continue taking the OPP where we have been taking it because as deputy commissioner, of course, I have been involved in setting direction for a number of years, so it's not that now that I'm commissioner I'm going to change that direction. Really, we're still focusing heavily on traffic safety, trying to reduce the deaths on our highways. Additionally, we want to focus more on waterway deaths and tragedies, because we've certainly seen a fair number of those this year, so ultimately we need to balance our uniformed patrols of the highways out with the need to be out on the waterways and trails as well.
GW - What are the policing priorities you've identified in the Northwest and specifically the Kenora area, that you want to focus on?
CL - I really haven't identified any personally at this point. I want to get around to the regions, meet with the media and community leaders right across Ontario over the coming months. I think one of our big issues, still, in Kenora is the ongoing amalgamation of the Kenora Police Service and any issues that fall from that. I'm not aware of any right now but, generally speaking, it takes a year or two for everything to be firing on all cylinders and I want to make sure that mayor and council are happy with our service and I'm sure they are.
Relationships with the First Nations communities are still very vital to us and, of course, the relationship with Treaty 3 as of late has been questionable. (There have been questions) by some people within the Treaty 3 leadership in terms of the legitimacy of the shooting of the lady in Kenora and so, at some point, I want to come up and meet with the Treaty 3 leaders. I just haven't set a date for it yet, but I will do that, as I will visit all communities across Ontario. But, certainly, Kenora will be a priority given some of the concerns raised by Treaty 3.
GW - You were instrumental in creating the Aboriginal Policing Bureau, took the lead in Caledonia for the last three years, what do you want to do to improve relationships with First Nations?
CL - We've done a lot and I just want to keep pushing that (building relations) forward. Community members, relationships with community members and with political groups within the First Nations leadership community. We formed a group a couple years ago that was originally called Aboriginal Relations and now it's called Provincial Liaison and it's really all about maintaining strong relationships with aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities that are affected by some of the ongoing protests prior to, during and following events.
In the case of the highway toll that happened in Couchiching this past year, our people were front and centre in trying to maintain relationships between both sides of that issue and that's very important to us and we want to keep pushing that. Once an event occurs and tensions are high, it's too late to form relationship at that point. We need to be working at them in a proactive way, maintaining them throughout and then doing any reparation, in terms of resolving, following an event and we will continue that, it's been very successful for us.
GW - So kind of acting as a mediator when something does happen?
CL - Yeah, for sure, a mediator in terms of making sure that lawful protest is known to be acceptable but also making sure that everybody understands the do's and don'ts in terms of the legal issues and that's often a fine line, depending on the nature of the protest.
GW - Going back to what happened in Kenora, it was a lone officer responding to a domestic call, what is the protocol and should it change to two officers should attend a domestic call?
CL - Generally our policy is that two officers attend a domestic but, quite often, domestic situations occur in a dwelling or a residence of some sort and we would normally send two officers minimum to that but when they happen right in the public, sometimes our officers are upon them before a second officer can arrive at the scene but that's just the reality of policing.
At any given time, driving through the streets of Kenora, or any community, you come across things and ultimately you start to deal with them while other officers are en route and, unfortunately, in that case, two officers there may or may not have changed the ultimate outcome of that.
It doesn't matter if there's 10 officers there, if somebody's approaching an officer with a weapon, then we're going to take action to defend life and protect life and, unfortunately that's what occurred there.
I think the public needs to be reminded that the SIU (Special Investigations Unit) did clear our officer. Yes, SIU raised some concerns in their release around our officers having legal privileges in terms of making notes and discussing those notes with lawyers, etcetera, and those are things we're working through with the SIU right now but our officers did follow our policy to the letter. There's no concerns at all. We don't agree with the director of SIU on some of these issues but we're working with SIU to sort through them in terms of our officers and their ability to be instructed by counsel, I mean, that's a right everybody has including police officers.
GW - As I understand it, though, it was actually a senior officer in Kenora who instructed the officers involved to write up their notes.
CL - Well, certainly, the witness officers, they have to write-up their notes but what conversation they have with counsel around that and the timing, the timing of that becomes an issue for us by policy. It can't go on forever but, certainly, they have the right to talk to counsel prior to making up the notes. That's their call and they'll follow the direction of their counsel and we can not interfere with that but there is an end time where we have to say 'enough is enough, guys.'
I don't know what the timing of all that was, I wasn't the commissioner at the time. I know it's under question, I know the SIU raised the question and I know we will deal with it and address it.
GW - What about officer segregation? I understand they're supposed to be kept apart but if they share counsel, counsel is required to share information between the two of them, is that ...
CL - Well, sometime's there's 12, 15 officers at an event, how do we segregate all those officers and have them all have independent counsel. This is a huge issue and it's not a simple issue but we need to work through it. When you think of a case like Caledonia, we had a number — hundreds — of officers there. When something happens do we bring in hundreds of lawyers? Traditionally, the (Ontario Provincial Police Association) provided one lawyer to represent all as their counsel.
There's a variety of meetings occurring with the SIU and with legal counsel representing the OPP and other stakeholders to discuss these issues with the SIU, so we just need to let that run its course and sort through some of these things.
We totally support it. As a police leader, I totally support the whole SIU concept, we just need to work out some of these little issues so that we're all on the same page.
GW - The relationship with the OPP and the SIU under Fantino was, we could call it, rocky. Are you looking to smooth that out a bit?
CL - I still, as commissioner Fantino did, disagree with the approach the SIU director has taken in some cases. That's not an anti-SIU perspective at all, we totally support and believe in the SIU in terms of an oversight and an independent body to investigate these issues. It's just that some of the issues that the SIU director has raised publicly, we don't agree with and we'll sort those out and let a higher level make the decisions of what's right and what's wrong, but we'll always cooperate with the SIU.