Two officers have received internal discipline and nine recommendations have been made following a five-month respectful workplace investigation within the Delta Police Department.
The findings and outcome of the investigation were released publicly Wednesday morning at the monthly meeting of the Delta police board.
The investigation, which centered on harassment and sexual harassment involving inappropriate comments, came about following a third-party complaint regarding potential misconduct on a patrol platoon.
According to Chief Neil Dubord, an internal investigation was initiated in consultation with the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner last fall.
Dubord said two officers were assigned full-time to the file with more than 30 people interviewed during the course of the investigation.
“We wanted to be able to investigate two things — the incident itself and investigate if it is prevalent in other areas of the organization,” he said. “The investigators were able to isolate very quickly that it was an isolated incident and that it was relative to a small number of people.”
Dubord said from the extensive interviews, nine officers were identified and the investigation continued further.
“After all of the final reports were done and evidence collected, there were two officers that we felt required discipline and were given discipline as a result of that within our system. There was one officer where a mediation occurred quite successfully. All of the officers accepted the discipline and took full responsibility for their actions and recognized how it was interpreted by those that were affected.”
Dubord said the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner also reviewed the final investigation report and was satisfied with the findings.
The DPD didn’t release the nature of the discipline.
The chief said it has been a challenging time for the organization.
“I do believe we are much stronger and we see the value of how strong policies to begin helped us through this,” he added. “There is no tolerance for this, there is no time for this and we will deal with this in as swift a manner that we can. From the onset, this investigation was taken seriously and a message of zero tolerance has been communicated. As an organization, we will learn from this experience and be better for it.”
Deputy Chief Norm Lipinski, acting as the discipline authority, identified a number of areas that can be improved within the department.
His nine recommendations include: further respectful workplace training, a fulsome review of the field training officer program, stabilizing patrol supervision through substantive supervisors, implementation of a recruit check-up system, re-assignment of C-platoon, debriefs with subject officers, professional standards section and the Delta Police Association, and mediation between subject officers and effected officers.
Lipinski confirmed that all of the officers involved remain on active duty with the department.
“Policy is one thing, but once you have it in place and once you have some occurrences there is always some learnings that you take away,” said Lipinski. “I feel more confident now moving ahead that we are in a much stronger place and I feel good that the subject officers took responsibility for their actions. We have followed up with everyone involved in this file and I’m happy to say we are pointed in the right direction.”
