The Charge against the person charged in the file was dropped and the police laid a service act charge- which is an internal process and NOT criminal charges.
I’m struggling to respond to you because you are mixing up a lot of unrelated things.
Firstly, judges are not experts on use of force- that is why they don’t generally comment on it. When it’s a use of force issue subject matter experts are brought in- usually in my experience one for crown and defence, that present the information the judge needs to know- they then make an educated determination- and they are quite good at using the opinions they are provided, so they usually avoid flippant remarks on it unless it’s a pretty shocking event.
So, in lots of cases in Ontario, and the rules are different because police are expected to use force so it’s balanced differently, there will be a professional responsibility officer in a court where there are potential service act (which are not criminal) concerns. The officer uses comments like the ones from the judge, discussing with the crown, and makes sense of whether there is a service act concern- usually for conduct that reduces the police services reputation. They will then lay that internal charge. This is roundabout system because they need the evidence for the charge and doesn’t rely on the officers producing evidence against themselves even for internal processes. Or is how it’s explained to me as an outsider looking at their conduct system.
IIU/ SIU/IIO etc is not professional standards. Professional responsibility units are a separate, non-criminal layer of review. It is not the same as an NDA charge. It’s a policy breach that has consequence.
Generally, because I’ve only really dealt with four provinces and their systems can be different but resemble each other, a file with a firearm that is brought up- a crown opinion will be sought as to whether there is public interest in a criminal charge. When that criminal charge isn’t approved or supported it will move to a service act charge. Those non-criminal ones they do internally.
Termination is very hard because of employment law and collective agreements. We aren’t interested in working with dummies. We just get to.
So a thing can be determined to not meet the threshold for charges by SIU, it can also shock a judge- and causes a charter breach, and can also end in a non-criminal conduct service breach that cost them pay.
Those are three independent things that really don’t have much to do with each other. If you can find the SIU report, and they are all published, I can look at it for you.
I am not a police apologist. I have been an SME and SMR against officers who wander wildly out of bounds.
Although, qualifier, I’m not in this biz anymore and this stuff is always moving. So I’m not an expert- I’m just a dude who saw some things years ago.
