An OPP Fatal On Highway 401 Near Dutton That Almost Happened
Just because a collision resulted in no injury does not mean that it was a minor incident. It is often a canary in the coal mine that we need to hear. A near-fatal collision on Highway 401 near Dutton reported on the OPP Twitter account appears to be much more important than the single sentence used to report its occurrence. The photo below was provided by the OPP along with the short description.
This photo was provided on the OPP West Twitter account showing an Elgin OPP cruiser that sustained sideswipe damage while on Highway 401 near Dutton.
The OPP Twitter statement indicated that the cruiser was sideswiped yesterday along with a comment that “Lots of rain out there” and “Let’s not let this happen again”. That is not very much information about an incident that could have taken an officer’s life.
It was not noted, for example, whether an officer was seated in the cruiser when the contact occurred. But even if the officer was some distance away is not the point. An officer could easily be seated in a cruiser, like is often the case, when such an impact occurs. And even if the officer or other persons were near the struck cruiser, an impact with greater overlap could easily send the struck cruiser toward those persons standing nearby. So this is critical information that needs to be known.
Very important questions need to be answered. Where was the cruiser positioned when it was struck? It would be expected that emergency lights were activated but certainly that needs to be confirmed.
Was the cruiser the only emergency vehicle at the site when this occurred? Many times other vehicles, including blocker trucks with large arrow signs, help approaching drivers to detect how they must maneuver around a site. When large and tall transport trucks exist, which is almost invariably the case, they block the view of drivers behind and beside them. So was this an incident that involved such blockage of the line of sight?
Was the cruiser located where it was due to some kind of investigation of a previous collision? Was it there to protect a disabled and vulnerable vehicle? We know nothing of the kind.
At times when a vehicle breaks down it can be stopped in a vulnerable location where it might be struck by oncoming traffic. Persons in the disabled vehicle may have to make an uninformed judgment whether to stay in the vehicle and risk being struck by a massive transport truck or attempt to cross the lanes of the highway on foot and risk being struck. So the involvement of a police cruiser with emergency lights can (sometimes) improve the chances of guiding approaching traffic away from a disabled vehicle. Again, we know nothing about whether this was a possibility in this specific instance.
We have posted a number of articles and news items on this Gorski Consulting website in the past in an attempt to describe the danger that exists whenever an OPP officer attempts a traffic stop on a 400 series highway such the 401. While it may be somewhat safer to perform such an action in the lower traffic volumes near Dutton, it can be extremely dangerous in the higher traffic volumes east of where Highway 402 merges with Highway 401 through the 200 kilometres toward Toronto and further eastward. Controlling speeds of vehicles is of obvious importance and when there are high traffic volumes, with tailgating being the norm, police can believe that a few traffic stops for speeding tickets can make the difference. Unfortunately, unless there is a very large increase in police presence for an extended time, those few traffic stops can produce more harm than good because of the unexpected chaos that develops around such stops.
It is of vital importance that if a traffic stop is unavoidable that the police officer study the situation of where the stop is made and what potential there is that the cruiser could be struck. The obvious consideration is that the cruiser needs to pulled over as far as absolutely possible, onto the right side of the highway and off of the shoulder, where possible. We have commented on the positioning of the cruiser if there has been another vehicle pulled over ahead of it and where this positioning may be of some help. But the approach of a loaded tractor-trailer that wanders toward the cruiser will make all these positioning issues irrelevant. When outside the cruiser police and others need to stay as far to the right and away from active lanes as possible. And all involved must grow another set of eyes (those extra eyes that a mother develops from monitoring a toddler) to constantly watch traffic for the potential development of something dangerous. This can be extremely stressful to officers who must also fill-out paperwork or make inputs to a computer while also monitoring the individual they have pulled over.
So we need some solutions that may be difficult to achieve. But we also need to recognize and accept that problems exist. The OPP twitter notification indicated that the involved police officer was “Beyond upset”. Other than the acceptable fact that such a reaction would be expected from anyone, we also cannot approach this problem from the viewpoint that being upset, making accusations or uninformed comments is a solution on its own. We can see every day whenever a controversial incident occurs that there are large numbers of instant experts who post on social media about what the obvious problems and solutions are, accompanied by vulgar and abusive expletives. Those persons have to be tolerated for the purposes of maintaining our even more important freedom of speech.
However for those responsible for an objective evaluation of what needs to be changed, proper and detailed documentation, with a minimum of bias, that results in high quality data is an absolute must. Providing a single sentence about an incident of such importance as the possibility of a police officer’s death is well below the degree of effort that needs to be expended. The next OPP cruiser struck on Highway 401 could result in much more tragedy and we owe it to the OPP officers and their families to make sure we have done all we can to keep them safe.
Issues Relating to Highway 401 Fatal Rear-End Impact Near Milton
The fact that drivers have difficulty with slowing or stopped traffic was not mentioned in the latest reporting of a fatal, rear-end impact that occurred on Highway 401 near Guelph Line yesterday. While the OPP were helpful in their posting of three photos of the results of the crash, nothing further was revealed or learned from the tragedy. Here are the photos provided by the OPP.
View of rear-ended Honda in which the right front passenger sustained fatal injuries.
View of front end of Honda showing the front end damage indicating that a secondary impact had occurred.
View of Pick-up truck hauling a large trailer that rear-ended the Honda.
What is even more revealing is that certain results exist that should have been discussed in a public venue.
Firstly, although the Honda sustained a substantial impact to its rear-end that should not have been of sufficient severity to cause fatal injuries to a right front occupant. Again, it has not been revealed that the deceased was actually in the right front seat but that is a very high probability whenever there are only two persons seated in a passenger car. So what caused the fatal injuries? That was one of the observant questions put out by a commenter on social media. What often happens in this scenario is that the initial rear-end impact causes the passenger to become out-of-position (OOP) during the subsequent frontal impact. Specifically, the passenger is thrown forward after the initial, rearward motion from the rear-end impact. When the passenger is thrown forward her upper body comes to be positioned too close to the airbag when it deploys and we have an air-bag induced fatality. So is this what happened? If it did then it needs to be identified. Police cannot hold back such important information that is critical to the public’s safety. While we understand the enormous safety benefits of airbags we also need to identify when they cause injury as this is the only way that we can draw attention to the fact that solutions need to be found.
Secondly, we see the obvious fact that the pick-up truck was hauling a large trailer where its stopping ability may be suspect. Only police who have access to the critical information about braking ability can know for sure. But we need comment on this issue from police for the same reasons as we need them for the Honda airbag concerns.
While an OPP video provided comments about how the road surface was dry and it was sunny, etc., it remains questionable why the windshield wipers on the Honda were stuck up on the windshield as if they were being used. Granted, because of the two impacts, something may have triggered the activation of the wipers but it needs further evaluation.
In the video the OPP also commented about not knowing why traffic had slowed or come to a stop. Anyone who has spent any time on Highway 401 approaching eastbound to Highway 25 would know that this is were traffic changes from highway speeds to a major slow-down or complete stop. It happens almost every day. To say one was confused over that occurrence appears unrealistic. Traffic slow-downs or stopping on high-speed expressways such as Highway 401 are a major problem that is not being addressed. Police and the Ministry of Transportation are blaming drivers for being inattentive. This is like blaming the worker for his own death when a machine does not contain a guard which prevents the workers hands from being placed in a wood-shaving operation and thus being pulled into the cutting mechanism. Yes, it is the workers fault, but the conditions in which the worker operates makes it highly likely that, eventually, he will make such a deadly mistake. The solution has to be in exploring an adjustment (i.e.e adding a guard to a cutting machine) that takes into account the probability that a human will make a mistake due to the extremely large number of times that a repetitive action takes place. So returning to the collision scenario, a vast number of drivers avoid collisions with stopped or slowed traffic but because of the vast number of occurrences that take place every day, there will always be a driver who will make an isolated mistake. In the area of Milton the Average Annual Traffic Volume (AATV) is well over 100,000 vehicles per day. It might only require 1 out of 100,000 of these drivers to make a mistake in order to result in a fatality, every day. The problem is complicated by the fact that these 100,000 drivers, fitted into a confined area of the highway, will tailgate even when their line of sight is greatly reduced by factors such as large trucks and unexpected lane closures due to previous collisions.
Blame is easy as it requires no action to improve safety conditions. Admitting to safety problems, in this age of the public’s reckless need for vengeance, where a solution is difficult to find, remains political and/or career suicide.
Inequality From Ontario’s Cuts To Legal Aid Is A Further Step In Wrong Direction
In the field of motor vehicle collision reconstruction I have occasions to examine how the legal system functions with respect to persons charged with various crimes related to motor vehicle collisions. At times I have been approached by persons looking to defend themselves while also possessing limited resources. Over the years I have also observed various legal entities discussing the problems with self-representation before the courts. These self-representations occur because those charged do not have the funds to hire lawyers and associated collision reconstruction experts. It has been noted that these self-representations add to the wasting of court time when the self-representing individual does not have a clue about court proceedings. It also leads to the obvious problems that individuals are found guilty of crimes, or of greater crimes, not because they are more deserving but because their financial situation causes their poor performance before the courts.
In the most recent budget of Premier Ford’s Ontario government which was disclosed this week, it was revealed that the Legal Aid system in Ontario will see a cut of $133 million, or almost 30%, from the system’s budget. While the Ford government claimed that this will enhance the program’s search for innovative ways of delivering aid, the obvious reality is that this is a clear cutting of the funds that provide a minimal level of justice to those who cannot be properly represented in court.
The repercussions of such cuts may be difficult to match, one-to-one, as direct relationships of cause and effect. Those persons who are charged and convicted will likely be sent to jail or face other punishments more than their wealthy neighbours. But, over time, there will be repercussions.Those repercussions may not show up in government statistics as related to legal aid cuts. Those repercussions will exhibit themselves in the increased numbers of individuals who are sent to jail, come out, repeat their crimes, and are sent back to jail. There will be more homeless persons who will never escape their plight. There will be more persons who become regularly involved in petty crimes and who graduate to more serious crimes that become dangerous to our society. There will be more children, observing the injustices done to their parents, who will harbour their resentments that will be difficult to detect and more difficult to erase.They will relate to more gangs and criminal organizations who will prey on society even more than they do now. When we scratch our heads and wonder where all these dangerous persons came from we can be sure that actions such as cutting legal aid and many similar social programs will be well hidden from our conscious psyche.
Mr. Ford is a patient gardener who is dutifully incubating his precious seedlings of baby criminals. Watering and fertilizing them through the cutting of social programs, such that in 5, 10 or 20 years he will have a very fine crop of criminals that will be roaming our streets for a generation to come.
School Bus Low Speed Rollover Could Have Been Deadly
A very low speed rollover of a school bus in north-west of Toronto yesterday could have been deadly – so what made it a successful non-event?
To begin with, there was no information about the specific location of the mishap. It reportedly occurred on Cold Springs Camp Road “Ganaraska Forest”. This remote area may have specific road conditions relevant to the cause of the collision. Although this is a hard top road surface many tar and chip surfaces contain substantial bumps and upheavals, particularly in the springtime and it would help to know what the road surface conditions were like.
Every person who has ridden in a school knows their childhood experiences whenever a school bus travelled over a bumpy road. In fact many adventurous boys would specifically sit in the back of the bus on these occasions because this would be the location where the bus would exhibit the largest vertical motion while traversing the bumps. While children find this entertaining there is a darker side to the issue.
School buses have stiff suspensions. When riding over bumps they exhibit large motions in their sprung mass. The sprung mass is that portion of the body that is riding on the suspension, or the mass minus the wheels, axles and suspension. That is why bus drivers and the companies that operate school buses need to pay attention to where the bus will be travelling. Especially in springtime when roads may change their character due to the warmth/frost cycle that causes road surface upheavals.
In documenting the road surface conditions of a particular section of roadway several years ago that was travelled by school buses I documented the conditions noted in the two photos below.
Example of a road surface upheaval on a roadway regularly travelled by school buses.
A crack in the pavement producing several inches difference in elevation can be a significant issue to the safety of a school bus.
These surface ruptures existed through several locations along this road. When documenting schools buses travelling over the bumps I was approached by a local police officer who interpreted that my documentations were a way of stalking the bus drivers who had observed me videotaping them and photographing the school buses on several occasions. When I pointed out to the officer that the road surface conditions were a danger to the safe operation of the school buses and that he should be reporting that danger to the municipality, he merely concluded that this would be of no use as the municipality would not listen to him. He also threatened that I discontinue my documentations or I would be charged.
So why is there such a difficulty in officially documenting the road surface conditions, especially when it may involve the safety of innocent children in a school bus? We know that these children will not be seat-belted and that the loss-of-control of a bus could result in a rollover. The kind of rollover that occurred at the Cold Springs Camp Road, but which could potentially result in much more serious consequences.
What can be said about the present collision is that the rollover of the school bus occurred at a very low speed. One can follow the tire marks on the sloped ditch as they terminate near the final rest position of the school bus. The tire marks end precisely in a lateral position next to the bus meaning that, just as the bus was coming to stop it fell over. So the forward speed of the bus was not the important matter. What was important, and potentially dangerous, was the low speed rollover.
This is where school bus design comes in. As an accident investigator under contract to Transport Canada in the 1980s I and my fellow investigators were required to participate in a Special Projects program where there was an emphasis on documenting school bus collisions. At that time it was recognized that there were many safety issues with school buses. As an example, sharp, sheet-metal panels installed in the interior body of the bus would separate even in minor collisions resulting in unnecessary lacerations, some of which could be serious. In other instances the seat backs if school buses contained metal tubes along their tops that resulted in unnecessary injury to a child that struck these stiff and narrow structures. Most importantly it was recognized that passenger ejection was a large threat due to the large windows and ease of ejection when rollover was a common mechanism in school bus crashes. There were many changes made to the design of school buses with introduction of “compartmentalization”, or the idea of keeping children confined to the local area where they were seated. Thus high-back seats were installed and the side windows were reinforced to create smaller openings to prevent ejection. And of course the sheet metal junctions were corrected.
The term “dice in a box” is commonly used to refer to the consequences of rollovers in that, one can engineer many things to reduce injury consequences, but no one can actually predict what will happen in an individual rollover as they are so unique. Yes, the general pattern of commencement of loss-of-control is common. But even then loss-of-control can occur, and often does, from an initial, minor impact with a lighter vehicle. Road surface condition is also a major and common factor in school bus loss-of-control. But once the loss-of-control begins the status of many factors comes into play as to what will happen next. What we see in the present case is that the school bus encountered a slope of the ditch next to the road and that was the primary factor in the rollover. But it was fortunate that there were no other objects present where the low speed rollover occurred. So large rocks could be danger. Trees and poles could also be a danger. And a factor that is less publicized is the presence of water.
Springtime and heightened water in ditches is not something that should be unexpected. Yet there is little appreciation of the fact that even shallow amounts of water in a ditch can be lethal to occupants of vehicles that overturn into such ditches. It was fortunate that the overturned school bus did not land in a water-filled ditch, that it was travelling slowly, that the bus was not fully loaded with passengers, and that the collision occurred in relatively warmer conditions and not in a winter blizzard or darkness.
When Transport Canada considered what needed to be done to improve the safety of school buses it was looking precisely at collisions such as this one where there would be a relatively low speed impact, or a loss-of-control, that would eventually lead to a rollover. What was crucially important is the prevention of ejection of the children and, fortunately, in this case, ejection was likely prevented. If a child had been ejected one can imagine that the full mass of the bus could fall onto the child and the consequences could be deadly. But one can never tell what will happen when you have “dice in box”. It is no different than a Monte Carlo casino where, in the vast majority of instances you win nothing or very little, but every so often you have the misfortune of hitting the deadly jackpot that you don’t want.
Investigation of Death of Jake Hughes Demonstrates Systemic Problems
When the public does not have access to the basis for death investigations no questions are asked even when the basis is flawed. This also applies to families who are kept in the dark about how conclusions were reached in assessments of their members’ deaths. In many instances the recognition that evidence about an investigation is unknown does not reach the public psyche. One only needs to look at the results of the infamous Humboldt Broncos tragedy to see how the holding back of the police investigation report was hardly given any mention in the official news media, yet so many were willing to draw conclusions and instruct the public as to what they should believe.
A new revelation has unfolded in an article written by Mark Kelley, Co-host of the CBC “The Fifth Estate” and posted to the CBC website on April 7, 2019. The story revolves around the death of a 19-year-old man, Jake Hughes, who was killed in an ATV incident on August 20, 2012. The official story was originally publicized that Hughes was the driver of the ATV that was travelling along a woodlot trail when an impact occurred with a metal bar of a barrier that was placed across the trail. Another rider of the ATV, Taylor Rivando, 18, was determined to be the rear passenger.
The father of Jake Hughes, Sam, happened to be a 15-year member of the Niagara Regional Police Service and, in my view, this likely played a large part in why the story did not just disappear like so many other faceless problems of the past. By the accounts noted in the CBC article Sam Hughes did not just lie down and accept the conclusions of the OPP investigation. Through his request made via the Freedom of Information he “eventually got his hands on the details of the OPP investigation” which led him to more questions. The article described how Sam Hughes was in a better position than most to understand the tricks of the trade in that he recognized what typically happens in police investigations when one of two persons in a vehicle dies and the surviving person claims that the deceased was the driver. “It’s the oldest trick in the book” Hughes was quoted as saying.
Well yes, in my experience, it is a very old trick indeed. One that any investigator should consider. But few persons in the public world, who have never been involved with, or have little or no knowledge of police investigations, would think to consider that possibility. The public has grown up bombarded with various TV crime shows where the good guy always wears white, impossibly complex death scenarios are unraveled in 30 minutes, and the perpetrator either admits to his/her crime or meets a deserved, deadly reward. Well, real life is nowhere like that and Sam Hughes was in a position of experience to know.
As the pathology report concluded that Jake Hughes died from the metal bar striking his chest and proceeding into his neck and head, it is easy to see how the OPP investigation would conclude that it was the driver of the ATV seated in the front who would be exposed to such an impact. But the alternative hypothesis was that the driver, Rivando, ducked when he detected the bar at the last instance. At least that was what one witness heard from Rivando shortly after the collision. The OPP however determined that it was not possible for the driver to duck under the bar. Sam Hughes then went on to prove them wrong. He obtained a similar ATV and created a similar barrier and reportedly showed that it could be done.
Other information from witnesses at a beach where the two riders were seen before the crash indicated that Hughes was the passenger and that the two could not have changed places as claimed by others.
The most compelling evidence, from my viewpoint, is that scrapes were noted on the helmet of Rivando and red paint was noted on the bar of the barrier which might confirm that Rivando’s helmet just barely slipped underneath the bar. However the OPP did nothing further to match the scrape and paint transfer. Whether this is an incorrect conclusion or not is not the point. The fact that there was no attempt to conduct an inquiry is what matters.
One of the interesting parts of the CBC article is how the OPP delivered the investigation to the Peel Regional Police to review and also to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. The reason given for involving the Missouri police is because the “U.S. had state-of-the-art reconstruction software”.
I have some knowledge of what is available with respect to computer assisted reconstruction and simulation programs. Even when I first joined the University of Western Ontario Accident Research Team on October 1, 1980 there was a small room designated as the living quarters of the massive PDP-11 computer that housed the highly advanced CRASH program. I think the computer had the processing capability of a modern hand-held calculator. But it looked very impressive. You typed in responses to dozens of questions and then waited as CRASH spilled out the precise answers to how the collision occurred. While CRASH was state-of-the-art technology back then and youngens would snicker now at its base computing, it has been refined over the years and the physics behind its calculations is still valid. A similar cousin-program of CRASH was the SMAC simulation program which I later experimented with in the middle 1980s and beyond. Both programs were developed for the U.S NHTSA programs which still run today, operating a slightly different version of CRASH called SMASH I believe. I am also aware of PC-CRASH which is a program that came out of Europe and has become about as common in usage as the CRASH and SMAC programs. Various vendors have also jumped into the marketplace, sometimes using CRASH and SMAC as the basis for their own versions of computer reconstruction and simulation. I have always advocated that police should be exposed to and use computer reconstruction and simulation programs but that has never occurred. With the more recent advancements in event data recorders (EDRs), or “Black Boxes”, police have chosen this technology for their purposes, primarily, I believe, because EDRs provide a blind number to things like travel speed, speed change from impact and other pre-crash values that do not necessarily require much technical knowledge expect in knowing how to download the data and how to interpret it.
So coming back to the issue of the “state-of-the-art software” utilized by the Missouri State Police, I am aware of a number of forensic-engineering, consulting firms in the southern Ontario who possess such so-called “state-of-the-art software”. I have been battling it out over the years with many of these experts in exchanging expert reports so that our mutual clients could come to an agreement with respect to civil litigation claims rather than going to trial. While computerized reconstruction and simulation does not guarantee a proper and just analysis it is often said by some sarcastics amongst us that it allows the analyst to get to the wrong answer faster. There is some true to that. But an expert who is honest, properly trained, experienced, and is truly looking for the truth, can be greatly assisted by such programs. The point is that the OPP need not have gone to Missouri to get an opinion, there are many experts in the immediate vicinity in southern Ontario who would be happy to provide an independent opinion, often at no cost, if it meant that justice was properly served.
At the risk of sounding too critical of the OPP I have to respond to the comment reportedly made by Chief Supt. Bernie Murphy, commander of the OPP’s professional standards bureau, in his 2016 letter to Sam Hughes in which he reportedly wrote “Since the time of this motor vehicle accident, a three-tier review process has been put in place in the [Technical Collision Investigation] and Reconstruction Program”. If that statement is meant to provide some assurance that all is well, I can assure everyone that it is not. I will give two instances where I recently gave testimony at criminal trials involved serious motor vehicle collisions that demonstrates just part of the problem with some police investigations and the three-tier program.
With respect to an impaired driving case that involved the death of an innocent party in a head-on collision the OPP investigation was reviewed by two police reviewers. Yet none of these reviews found anything wrong with the following scenario: After a very severe impact one of the severely damaged vehicles sustained major damage to its wheels before it slid several car lengths to its final rest position. In conducting a momentum analysis the police reconstructionist determined that the vehicle had to be travelling at 2 km/h at the time that it separated from impact and it commenced its slide to rest. Think about that for a moment. Picture in your mind this heavily damaged vehicle with heavy damage to (at least) one of its wheels, separating from impact and commencing its travel to rest at 2 km/h, where would you expect it to go? Six inches? But the momentum analysis told the reconstructionist what the answer was. And apparently the two other police experts who reviewed the investigation also relied on the truth of this momentum analysis. But where was the common sense?!!
In a second instance a police reconstructionist had access to an eye-witness account of another police officer who claimed to have since the impaired driver travelling at over 150 km/h before impact. A proper momentum and energy analysis along with physical evidence proved that this could not be so. But to match the witness police officer’s account the reconstructionist conducted an analysis of the post-impact speed of the vehicle and then, knowing he would be in trouble once he completed the collision phase of the reconstruction, simply told the court that the massive destruction that could be seen in the crush of the two vehicles clearly demonstrated that the impaired driver must have been travelling much faster than the partial analysis that he conducted. Perhaps the most outrageous of his acts was to take a yaw mark, that was clearly visible as a yaw mark in the on-site photographs, and use it to decelerate the vehicle at a rate equivalent to a vehicle which is sliding with maximum brake application. When he saw my countering comments in one of my reports he then reduced the level of deceleration by dividing the maximum rate by two. For those unfamiliar the issue here is a break-down.
Maximum deceleration from braking on a dry pavement is often 0.7g or higher. Yaw marks are tire marks that are created when a vehicle rotates but its tires are not locked, thus producing a curved tire mark that contains striations and is very different in appearance from a tire mark produced by maximum braking. Deceleration from a yaw mark varies between 0.2 and 0.4g depending on the degree to which the vehicle has rotated with respect to its travel direction.
So imagine the tire mark is 10 metres long. Using the maximum braking deceleration of 0.7g the reconstructionist comes up with a speed loss of about 42 km/h in that 10 metre distance. Since the mark showed that the vehicle had been at an early stage of rotation the reconstructionist should have used the lower end of the yaw deceleration near 0.2g which would have resulted in a speed loss of about 22 km/h. In attempts to repair the erred calculations by dividing the maximum braking deceleration by two he would have used a rate of about 0.35g, which is better, but it is still wrong. It is wrong because that is not the way that the process of analysis works. It demonstrates that either the reconstructionist did not know how to handle a yaw mark deceleration, or worse, he did know but he was attempting to increase the speed calculations where ever he could to match the witness police officer’s statement. The point is that if he had used a computer reconstruction or simulation program the “cleverness of his confusions” would have been easily revealed because his inputs could be easily seen. But by conducting a home-made analysis that sounded plausible to the court these problems were not easily detected.
While I believe that the vast majority of police are good and honest, I have also observed instances like those noted above where either improper training, lack of understanding, or purposeful attempts to reach an unwarranted conviction or result are never drawn out and corrected. That process leaves a black mark on all officers including those who do not deserve it. It is damaging because persons such as myself must spread such news to others in articles like this, who then pass it on to yet others and so on.
Police, like myself, and everyone else around me, are not perfect. We all make honest mistakes and sometimes we twist the truth without recognizing the seriousness of the consequences. What we all need, to control the times when we do not function as perfect snowflakes, is a system that is in place that reduces the frequencies of those imperfections while also reducing the consequences of them.
The OPP had it right, to some degree, in creating a so-called three-tiered review process. But it has failed to understand that even three police officers may not have the technical knowledge, experience or motivation to correct an error. Yet, family members like Sam Hughes are far more motivated to expose problems even though they may, at times, also be in error. The point is that the exposure of police investigations outside of the police community may be uncomfortable to police but this exposure can lead to the correction of errors and may provide greater justice. Surely police have broader shoulders to understand that what criticisms may develop are minimal if an unjust result is overturned as a result of the exposure of their erred conclusions. Alternatively, even when persons like Sam Hughes are wrong, family members can rest with some greater peace through the education they gain by conducting their own analysis and being exposed to countering opinions that demonstrate where their conclusions failed.
Where we presently fail is in the degree to which we hold police investigations secret from the public and particularly family members who deserve the answers to the questions they ask. We are not a society that kicks over the wheelchair of an invalid just for our amusement. We are a society that attempts to be impartial, fair, and unrecognizing of skin colour, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability and so on. In compliance with those beliefs the majority of us who sit quietly on the sidelines while injustices prevail need to listen and watch more closely, and speak up when we detect that those injustices are at play.
I am very much appreciative of Mark Kelley and the CBC for creating the article about Jake Hughes that may draw attention to the systemic problems in police investigations that are often unexposed.
You must be logged in to post a comment.