CONTROL FOR SQ URGED

Lawbreaking force needs civilian overseer: report

The provincial government has to set up a civilian body to overhaul the
Surete du Quebec, a backward and disorganized police force that routinely
breaks the law during criminal investigations, is engaged in turf wars with
other police forces and lacks professionalism in the way it does police
work, a public inquiry has concluded.

The Poitras commission's 1,700-page report, made public yesterday, calls
for a sweeping reform of the 3,900-member police force, including the
appointment of a seven-member civilian body to oversee the SQ's activities.

"A crisis of values has shaken the Surete du Quebec from the beginning of
this decade," the report says.

"The concepts of loyalty, integrity and equality are poorly understood. Any
criticism of the organization or its practices made by a member seems
suspect."

Under the commission's recommendations, the government would appoint
members of the civilian body, choosing four people from the fields of law,
administration, social sciences and labour relations, as well as a
representative of Quebec's police and fire chiefs. No police officers
should be appointed, the commission says.

The three-member public inquiry headed by Lawrence Poitras, former chief
justice of Quebec Superior Court, cost Quebecers $20 million and spent more
than two years looking into the SQ's investigative practices and the
after-effects of a botched drug investigation that has come to be known as
the Matticks Affair.

The drug-smuggling case was thrown out of court in 1995 after a judge ruled
SQ officers had planted evidence used at the trial of brothers Gerald and
Richard Matticks and five other men who were arrested after police seized
26.5 tonnes of hashish in containers at the Port of Montreal.

Public Security Minister Serge Menard, who released the report at a press
conference in Montreal yesterday, called it "the most exhaustive in Quebec
history" and said he has set up a committee within his department to study
it.

Menard said he wants to act quickly on the report's 175 recommendations,
which include having the SQ adopt a mission statement and preventing it
from conducting internal investigations of its own officers.

"I remain convinced that the men and women in the SQ are ready to accept
these reforms," Menard said.

The minister said he met with SQ management yesterday to reinforce the
force's main priorities - to respect the charter of rights and other laws
while conducting investigations, to bring offenders to court and to ensure
the security of the public.

"The officers of the Surete du Quebec, like all other police officers, must
respect the law in all circumstances."

Menard said he knows many police officers - not just those in the SQ - feel
the charter and other laws handicap them in carrying out their duties.

The Poitras report lists complaints about SQ officers uttering threats to
potential witnesses. One investigator is quoted as saying to a witness:
"I'll tell you something about how it works at the Surete du Quebec. Drugs
get planted in your car, the police are called and you're screwed."

It also discusses how police officers are pressured into lying in court - a
phenomenon that in the U.S. has been referred to as "testilying" - so as
not to lose a case, because investigators are judged on cases that are won
in court.

Menard said that as a criminal lawyer, he suspected those practices existed.

"But I think what I like best about the report is that it didn't tell me so
much what existed, but it contained reflections on what measures we can
take to prevent it," he said.

The Poitras inquiry recommends that the Police Act be amended to "ban those
activities that are incompatible with the duties" of an SQ officer, and
that a 24-hour legal-counseling service be set up to assist police
officers.

Menard said the report's recommendations would make it harder for police
officers to ignore the law. "There's a strange conviction (among SQ
officers) that to apply law and justice you must sometimes go around the
law," he said.

But even while admitting there are serious problems that need to be fixed,
Menard defended the SQ, saying officers were not accused of having broken
the law for personal gain.

Menard said he has confidence in the SQ's current chief, Florent Gagne, a
former deputy minister in the Public Security Department and the second
civilian to head the troubled force.

The report paints a picture of a police force that is reluctant to use new
investigative procedures, abuses its powers of arrest and detention to
interrogate people who have not been arrested, relies too much on informers
and does not check out information that informers give investigators.

"In the eyes of many, with the Matticks Affair, the Surete du Quebec set an
unenviable record" and became "infamous through scandals of corruption and
abuse," the commission says.

"It is obvious to the commission that the Surete du Quebec neither
recognizes nor acknowledges its own deviance."

Furthermore, the SQ, which routinely investigates incidents like police
shootings involving other police forces, is unable to conduct criminal
investigations of its own officers or other police forces because of a "law
of silence similar to that found in organized crime," it says.

The report recommends that by 2007, the SQ require its criminal
investigators to have university degrees. It also recommends that the pay
scale be amended to promote additional training.

As for the bungled drug investigation that sparked the Poitras inquiry, the
commission singles out ex-chief Serge Barbeau, who stepped down when the
inquiry began.

The report says Barbeau, now vice-chairman of the Quebec parole board,
should have acted earlier to compel SQ officers to co-operate with the
internal investigation.

"(Barbeau) cannot be excused for not having taken the necessary
authoritative actions as early as the fall of 1995 to show leadership and
deal ruthlessly with those of his officers who had openly defied and
challenged his authority."

The report also criticizes deputy chief Andre Dupre and Inspector Michel
Arcand, who at a Quebec City party put pressure on Hilaire Isabelle, one of
three officers conducting the internal investigation.

The report calls Arcand's attitude "contemptuous," and criticizes Barbeau
for later appointing him to head the Wolverine anti-biker squad, saying
that sent the wrong message.

The investigation of the Matticks Affair was stymied by things like a
refusal by officers to participate, a union order to the investigators not
to "badger" officers, and a practice within the SQ that subordinates could
not interrogate superior officers, the report says.

It praises the internal investigators, saying Isabelle, Bernard
Arsenault and Louis Boudreault acted in an exemplary manner "under most
trying circumstances and in a clearly hostile work environment."

Four other people - deputy chiefs Louise Page and Gilles St. Antoine,
internal-affairs investigator Jean Bosse, and Chief Inspector Jacques
Letendre, the SQ's commissioner of professional ethics - are singled out
along with the three investigators as having co-operated with the
commission in an "exemplary" fashion.

Poitras recommends that a committee be appointed to follow up on the
report, and that any complaints or reprisals against those seven people be
reported to that committee.

As for the people blamed in the Poitras report, Menard said a copy of the
report has been forwarded to the Justice Department, which will decide
whether there is enough evidence to lay criminal charges. He left it up to
SQ chief Gagne to decide whether disciplinary action would be taken against
any of those people by the SQ.

The Poitras report also says the SQ's unwillingness to share information
with other police forces - particularly Montreal Urban Community police -
has hurt criminal investigations.

It says the situation was made worse in 1996 when the SQ's
criminal-investigations squad was moved to Montreal.

"This did nothing to promote teamwork. A virtual police war was being waged
at a time when j organized crime expanded outside city limits."

Last January, the SQ submitted a report on the war against crime gangs that
the commission says was partially plagiarized from a similar report written
by the MUC police four months earlier. Worse, the commission says, the SQ
made critical statements about the other police forces in the Wolverine
anti-gang squad in order to make its own contribution seem more
significant.

Poitras says that's part of the reason the MUC police pulled out of the
Wolverine squad last year.

Jacques Dupuis, the Liberal public-security critic, called for quick action
on the report.

"We've been investigating police officers in this province for five years,"
said Dupuis, a former prosecutor. "Now it's time to act."

Sean Gordon of the gazette contributed to this report

- - For the complete text of the Poitras commission's recommendations, visit
The Gazette's Web site: www.montrealgazette.com