The importance of addressing the significant issues raised when screening complaints was reinforced in Sarpong v Law Enforcement Complaints Agency, 2026 ONSC 3525 (CanLII). There, the complainant was “sitting in his car in a hotel parking lot, when the [police] officers approached him, demanded that he produce identification, and threatened him with arrest, if he failed to do so.” The complaint was dismissed on the basis that “there was insufficient evidence of misconduct on the part of the officers.”
On judicial review, the Court noted that in screening complaints, it is not necessary to address every issue raised. However, the Court found that in this matter, the screening official, the Complaints Director, failed to address three “key issues and central arguments raised by” the complainant:
- The Complaints Director failed to grapple with the concern that the police demanded identification on the threat of arrest without legal authorization. It was not enough to say that the officers were investigating a possible trespass. Such an investigation did not authorize the demand made and detention of the complainant without reasonable suspicion that he had committed an offence.
- The Complaints Director did not explain why the police officers’ use of allegedly insulting, disrespectful and unprofessional language (as framed by the complainant) was not “abusive” as defined in the legislation. The failure of the complainant to use the legislative term was not a basis for excluding the language at issue.
- The Complaints Director did not explain why certain statements made by the investigator to the complainant did not amount to an appearance of bias. The investigator’s statements (which were recorded by the complainant) included the following:
- that as he described the facts of his complaint to the investigator, the investigator interrupted him and said that he was not being honest and had made the whole incident up;
- that the investigator suggested that he was ‘looking to get a big chunk of money one day’ by making the complaint;
- that the investigator suggested that he could be charged with public mischief for making false allegations;
- that the investigator told him that if he refused to resolve his complaint informally, the investigation would go nowhere, and he would find the complaint to be unsubstantiated; and
- that the investigator said that he had done a background check on him and determined that he ‘is not very credible.’
However, the Court did not find that the investigator’s failure to permit the complainant to reply to the police officers’ response to the complaint constituted procedural unfairness.
The matter was returned to the Complaints Director for redetermination.
