Complaints of sexualized conduct in British Columbia’s municipal police departments have been frequent enough for the province’s policing watchdog to launch its first systemic investigation into how forces deal with the problem. 

The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner announced the probe Wednesday, in its first exercise of the power granted after an amendment to B.C.’s Police Act. 

“Sexualized conduct in police workplaces, municipal police work places has been a recurring issue that I’ve seen far too often,” commissioner Prabhu Rajan said in an interview Wednesday. 

Rajan said he hopes the investigation can shed light on how police forces can better handle sexual misconduct complaints, “to close any gaps and to protect people who may report and to strengthen public trust.”

He said using the office’s systemic investigation power for the first time would allow it to examine issues with “broad impact,” since sexualized conduct affects not only individual officers, but also potential police recruits and the public at large. 

The investigation will involve the 15 municipal agencies under the complaint commissioner’s purview, and Rajan said all departments are expected to co-operate with the probe. 

“It’s fair to say that many, if not most of the chief constables were concerned that a systemic investigation is a way of us somehow eliciting complaints,” Rajan said. “We made very clear that is not the purpose of a systemic investigation. It is not individual based.”

He said past victims or complainants will not be compelled to participate unless they want to, even though they could technically be compelled. 

“That would not be a proper or trauma-informed approach,” he said. “Certainly we would not use this process and cause re-victimization of anybody.” 

He said individual cases are often manifestations of broader workplace issues, and a systemic investigation can highlight the roles of not only police leadership in departments, but also police boards and unions in preventing problematic behaviours. 

“Frontline officers often get named in individual cases, but I am frankly as concerned if not more concerned with an environment that maybe allows that conduct to occur,” he said. 

The Office of Police Complaint Commissioner said in a statement announcing the probe that sexual misconduct in police workplaces undermines “operational effectiveness” of law enforcement.  

The investigation’s terms of reference say “sexualized conduct” includes “sexualized comments, jokes, gestures, advances, attention, propositions, threats.” 

The broad definition, the terms say, also includes “unnecessary” physical contact, insults or “demeaning comments” around someone’s gender or sexual identity, sharing or displaying sexual content, gossip or rumours, career-related sexual propositions and “predatory or grooming behaviours by persons in positions of authority.” 

Systemic investigations, the commissioner’s office said, allow the agency to “examine broader patterns, risks, and practices in policing,” rather than individual incidents of police misconduct. 

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Rajan said the investigation isn’t necessarily about further quantifying how prevalent sexual misconduct is in municipal policing, but identifying “best practices” that could potentially form a standardized approach to handle sexual misconduct cases. 

“The focus of the systemic investigation is not to quantify how much is happening,” he said. “It’s a recurring concern. It exists. So what do we do about it?” 

The Office of Police Complaint Commissioner said it expects to release the investigation report by April 2027.

‘A welcome development’

Danielle McNabb, a police oversight expert at Brock University, calls this investigation a welcome development from a public accountability and transparency perspective.

“It’s really going to be an important step into documenting the extent the nature of police sexual misconduct within the workplace,” McNabb said.

She hopes part of the review will also include looking at the discipline that’s involved in these cases — and if that discipline is meaningful.

“If not, how do we improve that?”

“I think police forces need to be … workplaces that are free of sexual harassment,” she said. “That would go a long way in perhaps helping to not only recruit more women into policing, but also to retain women in policing so that the environment is a safe environment to work.”

McNabb said while this investigation is not a “silver bullet” to solving the complex problem, it could be the catalyst of future changes that reduces the prevalence of sexual misconduct within police forces.

“To really produce meaningful change at both a policy and operational level,” McNabb said.