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Who Watches the Watchdogs? Police Accountability Goes to Judicial Review in BC

A Saanich resident’s judicial review asks the BC Supreme Court to reconsider the limits of municipal police discretion.


By Erin E. Booth
Sept 26, 2026

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Here is a question I will be asking the BC Supreme Court next week:

What happens when the person responsible for Professional Standards at a municipal police department decides not to open a criminal investigation into a fellow officer — provides no substantive reason for that decision — and the police watchdog decides there is nothing requiring investigation?

Where, exactly, is the oversight?

That question sits at the heart of my upcoming judicial review of a decision by British Columbia’s Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner (OPCC).

In 2024, I attempted to report a Saanich Police officer for alleged breach of trust under s. 122 of the Criminal Code. What followed was approximately six months of trying to have the allegations formally received and investigated.

Over those six months, I provided information, statements and evidence. Other police agencies opened occurrence files when I approached them. But Saanich Police — the officer’s own department — did not initiate a criminal investigation.

That distinction matters.

Because Saanich Police was the “agency of jurisdiction,” the other police agencies I approached could document my report and forward it to Saanich Police, but the decision whether to initiate an investigative file into one of its own officers remained within the same police department.

Ultimately, that decision rested with Professional Standards.

After six months, I was told there was nothing that would even rise to the threshold required to open a criminal investigative file.

Because Professional Standards dealt with my allegations without initiating such a file, the statements and evidence requested from me were not placed into an investigative file that I could later obtain through freedom-of-information legislation. No investigator was assigned.

I was ultimately provided no substantive explanation for why an investigation had not been initiated and had no meaningful way to determine how that decision had been reached.

That raises an important accountability question:

If Professional Standards can assess allegations against a fellow officer without opening an investigative file, what record exists by which that decision can later be scrutinized?

I took that concern to the OPCC.

The OPCC concluded my complaint was inadmissible. Its May 21 decision stated:

“The information provided by Ms. Booth shows the SPD considered the information she provided and concluded in its discretion that no criminal investigation was warranted.”

It went further:

“The Complaint does not provide information that could show this to have been outside the realm of reasonable professional judgment.”

And:

“There is nothing to indicate that the SPD’s failure to initiate a criminal investigation was neglectful in the sense of being inconsistent with the reasonable exercise of professional judgment.”

Those passages are now central to my judicial review.

But how would a citizen ever establish that?

This is where I think the case raises an important question extending well beyond my particular complaint.

The OPCC also noted that I had not identified a requirement in the Police Act, Criminal Code or Saanich Police policy requiring “further or better written reasons” for the decision. It concluded that I had not provided information showing the decision fell outside “the realm of reasonable professional judgment.”

But consider the practical problem.

If no criminal investigation is opened, no investigator is assigned, and no substantive reasons for declining an investigation are recorded or provided, how is a member of the public supposed to obtain the information necessary to demonstrate that the decision was improper?

And more importantly:

If the allegation itself is that a person responsible for Professional Standards used that position to shield a colleague from investigation, can the absence of evidence produced by that very process become the reason the allegation is never investigated?

I am not asking the Court to decide whether anyone committed misconduct. That is not what this judicial review is supposed to determine.

I am asking the Court to review the OPCC’s inadmissibility decision and, if that decision is found unreasonable, to return the matter to the Police Complaint Commissioner for another admissibility determination.

An order of certiorari.

The law, which in this situation is the Police Act, sets out what constitutes an admissible complaint.

Section 82 defines an admissible complaint simply as one where the conduct alleged, if substantiated, would constitute misconduct.

The BC Court of Appeal explained that distinction in British Columbia (Police Complaint Commissioner) v. Sandhu: the admissibility inquiry is not about the likelihood that the officer committed the alleged conduct. It concerns the nature and characterization of that conduct, assuming it is substantiated.

My argument is therefore straightforward:

If it were proven that a Professional Standards officer deliberately used that position to prevent a criminal investigation of a colleague, could that constitute misconduct?

If the answer is yes, shouldn’t the allegations at least get through the front door of the complaint process so they can be investigated?

However, something else important happened.

There is another accountability mechanism available to Canadians that very few people know about: private prosecution.

Rather than continuing to ask Saanich Police to initiate an investigation, I laid a private Information before the Provincial Court.

The matter went to Crown Counsel.

Crown subsequently directed that the RCMP investigate the allegations. That investigation remains underway, and nothing I say here should be interpreted as suggesting that the officer is guilty of an offence. He is entitled to the presumption of innocence.

But the significance to my judicial review is different.

Before the OPCC issued its inadmissibility decision, it had been advised that a criminal investigation had been initiated following direction from Crown Counsel.

Indeed, on April 21, the Deputy Police Complaint Commissioner suspended a separate Police Act investigation concerning the same officer pending the outcome of that criminal investigation.

Yet the May 21 inadmissibility decision does not address that development.

And when the Record of Proceedings was produced for my judicial review, correspondence I had sent the OPCC advising it of the Crown-directed investigation was not contained in the Record.

That creates another question:

How could the reasonableness of Saanich Police’s conclusion that “no criminal investigation was warranted” be assessed by the OPCC without addressing the fact that Crown subsequently directed a criminal investigation into the allegations?

My amended petition puts the issue another way: either the decision-maker knew about the criminal investigation and did not address a material part of the factual context, or that information never reached the decision-maker despite having been provided to the OPCC and a procedural error occured.

Both those issues are reviewable and are what I am asking the Court to consider.

What a judicial review actually does

A judicial review is not a trial of the police officers involved, nor is the Court being asked to decide whether my underlying allegations are true. It is simply a mechanism that allows for a decision made by an administrative body to be reviewed by a justice of the Supreme Court.

Under the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Vavilov, reasonableness review examines whether a decision is rational and internally coherent and whether it is justified in light of the legal and factual constraints bearing on the decision.

My petition argues, among other things, that the OPCC

• applied the wrong approach to the s. 82 admissibility test;
• focused on whether I had already demonstrated misconduct rather than asking whether the alleged conduct, if substantiated, meets the definition of misconduct defined in s. 77;
• failed to meaningfully address allegations beyond neglect of duty; and,
• failed to account for material information concerning the subsequent criminal investigation.
  
  

The OPCC disputes those arguments, and the Court will decide them.

But regardless of the result, I think there is a broader public-interest question worth discussing:

Who oversees Professional Standards?

Police necessarily have considerable discretion about how investigative resources are used. Nobody expects every allegation made to police to result in charges — or even a full investigation.

But Professional Standards occupies a particularly important position when the person being complained about is another police officer.

So where should the line be?

Should an Officer-in-Charge of Professional Standards be able to decide that allegations against a colleague do not warrant a criminal investigation without creating an investigative file or providing substantive reasons?

If so, what mechanism allows that decision to be independently scrutinized?

And if the OPCC requires a complainant to demonstrate that the decision fell outside “reasonable professional judgment” before it will even admit a misconduct complaint, how does the complainant obtain the evidence necessary to do that when the underlying police decision produced no investigation and no substantive reasons?

Those are the questions I am taking to court.

Because police accountability is not only about what happens after misconduct is proven.

Sometimes the more fundamental question is:

Who gets to decide whether anyone is allowed to look in the first place?


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See also: Index of articles regarding Law and Bylaw – CRD Watch Homepage