RCMP Staff Sgt. Jerry Nutbrown brings you behind the scenes with a serious of columns taking you behind police work and how it’s done in our community. If you have a question you think needs to be answered in Behind the Bison, send it to admin@borderpulse.ca and we will be sure to share it with him.
Often in media releases about police incidents, you may see that someone got charged but the investigation is noted to be ongoing. This may strike some people as odd because shouldn’t the investigation be complete if someone was charged? Not always.
Some incidents may be fairly straight forward not involving a lot of moving parts but some are more complicated and will involve many tasks to be completed after the initial police attendance at the scene(s). Attending a dispute where one person punched another wouldn’t likely take much follow-up investigation (except medical information in case there was an injury).
For police to arrest and lay a charge we need reasonable and probable grounds that an offense was committed, and this always requires evidence. Most often there is enough evidence to do this but for a court to convict a person, there is a higher standard of proof required, and this is where follow-up investigation steps are often required.
Generally, the longest delays occur when we need to send away exhibits to be processed for evidence. These may go to a specialized section to try and extract evidence from such things as a phone or computer, or we may need to send items away to a lab to extract possible evidence such as DNA. These investigative steps will certainly get a line added to a media release that the investigation is ongoing as its unknown if there will be any evidence back from the specialized services.
If we do get some evidence from the items we have seized then there may be further follow up tasks to now link that new evidence specifically to a suspect(s) or scene. We may now need to write Information to Obtains to be granted Warrants or Orders to complete this. Again, this all takes time.
Police may need to get more statements from witnesses that had left a scene prior to police arrival or there could be secondary statements from people as we learn more about the incident and need clarification from them. Some people we need to speak with may not live nearby or they may be transient and locating them may take a long time.
We may also need some time to strategize on how we would approach certain processes we could apply to the investigation and some of these we don’t discuss publicly. Sometimes these processes are unusual or not typical so we may need to consult our legal experts to ensure what we do complies with law and past legal findings. We may need to be a bit tricky at times to approach things in a manner that provides us the best chance of legally obtaining evidence.
Some delays can be for availability of people that may be able to aid in our investigations such as video evidence that can only be obtained by certain security people that are the only ones to have access to extract video.
Until we have gathered and process all available evidence, investigations will be ongoing.
Read more: Behind the Bison – Body worn Cameras
