Police Chief John Gauthier, is defending the service's handling of sexual assault cases that were criticized in a Globe and Mail investigation earlier this year after an internal review found Timmins Police had mislabeled many of its own cases.
“In February, the Globe and Mail published an article titled Unfounded: Globe investigation on how police handle sexual assault allegations," Police Chief Gauthier stated in his opening remarks to the board.
The Globe article, written by Robyn Doolittle, showcased sexual assault cases within the “unfounded classification code,” from a database known as the incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR), submitted annually to Statistics Canada by all police forces.
The Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics in Statistics Canada defines an incident as 'unfounded' if it has been determined through investigation, that no violations of the law took place, at the time or location.
The Globe article defined the unfounded classification code as a malicious, or mistaken report that was a way to render sexual assault allegations as baseless.
“Based on a statistical review of StatsCan data, the Globe concluded, one in every five sexual assaults reported was declared as baseless, and thus as unfounded,” explained Gauthier.
This statistic led to an expression of concern by women’s groups across Canada including Timmins and Area Women in Crisis Centre.
Although Timmins Police were not at the centre of the Globe’s investigation, the statistics relating to TPS’s handling of sexual assault cases was included in a link that provided information of all police forces.
The data held by Statistics Canada provided by TPS stated 641 total sexual assault cases were from 2009 to 2015 – 190 were deemed to be unfounded.
However, Police Chief Gauthier said that figure was wrong due to a string of clerical errors that mislabeled handling of sexual assault cases.
TPS administrators commissioned an internal review of their own statistics, assigning Amy Chartier, an employee with qualifications in training for the UCR reporting system, to conduct the review.
Chartier found TPS overstated the number of unfounded cases in the original TPS statistics to the UCR because of clerical errors.
“An initial query of our records management system indicated that TPS investigated 486 assaults and 177 were classified as unfounded,” Gauthier said.
The conclusion showed that of the 641 sexual assaults originally reported – TPS properly classified 549, or a 14.4 per cent drop, and a difference of 92 actual cases.
When the corrections to the data mislabeling are considered, TPS properly handled all 549 reported sexual assaults in Timmins, the police service says
“Not one sexual assault case was mishandled,” said Chief Gauthier.
“Sexual assault reports are taken seriously, and are always fully investigated,” he added. “The issue is certainly not, and was never in the way that Timmins Police investigate sexual assaults.”
In the future, only a trained member will input information into the statistical reports.
This qualified data will enhance our crime analysis and will be better assist local resource planning in our community.
“This was an important learning opportunity for TPS, said Chief Gauthier. “We have taken the necessary steps to correct the reporting errors.”
A new process is now in place that uses only clerks trained in UCR reporting labelling.
Gauthier said TPS internal review was shared with StatsCanada, and they agreed with their findings and conclusions
During his presentation, Chief Gauthier gave several examples of proper and improper labelling of an incident.
A good 'unfounded classification' was a situation where a person appeared to be breaking into some home and police arrive to find it was the owner trying to get in as he locked himself or herself out.
“There was no violation of the law and the case is rightly labelled unfounded,” said Gauthier.
A bad example of labelling an incident as unfounded was when a teacher filed a complaint about a sexual assault based on rumours heard at school. The police investigate and spend time on the case, but find no evidence the sexual assault occurred.
“This case should not be labelled as unfounded, but rather as solved,” said Gauthier, “because an investigation was held and no violation occurred.”
“In a situation where a sexual assault is investigated, but it is unclear if a violation occurred, that case should not be labelled unfounded, but as unsolved.” said Gauthier.
“In a situation, where a sexual assault was reported, and the investigation revealed that the victim was untruthful – this should not have been classified as unfounded but as completed-solved, and reclassified as Assist the Public as a sexual assault did not take place,” explained Gauthier.