Amid a provincewide review of the ways Ontario cops perform strip searches, the chiefs of police have called out the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services — which they say has failed to come up with proper standards for guiding law enforcement.

“Where is MCSCS?” top brass wondered in a post dated Aug. 3 on the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police's (OACP) website in regards to a systemic review of strip searches.

“MCSCS is supposed to be setting standards and providing guidance to police services on their policies. However, the ministry remains largely absent from this conversation,” it said. OACP added that its executive director, Ron Bain, has had conversations with assistant deputy minister Steve Beckett, who agreed that “the ministry must play a key role in this review, and that he would discuss what that role might be with deputy minister Matt Torigian," according to the post.

A spokesperson for OACP declined to comment on the matter directly.

At the end of July, Ontario’s police watchdog launched a systemic review of policies and practices on strip searches (otherwise known as Level 3 searches) during an arrest. Despite a 15-year-old Supreme Court decision calling such searches “inherently humiliating and degrading” for detainees, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) said it continually hears complaints about officers who routinely conduct strip searches, and often unjustifiably. More recently, a 2013 decision from the Ontario Court of Justice said that, despite the Supreme Court's direction and Toronto Police Service's own rules, some officers "still do not seem to understand the limits on their authority to conduct strip searches."

“In too many Ontario criminal cases, judges have found that the police conducted improper strip searches, sometimes in apparent disregard or ignorance of policies that require a case-by-case risk assessment," director Gerry McNeilly added in a news release.

Ontario police watchdog Gerry McNeilly at a press conference in July. Fatin Chowdhury/Justice for Migrant Workers.

Ontario police watchdog Gerry McNeilly at a press conference in July. Fatin Chowdhury/Justice for Migrant Workers.

Less than two weeks before OIPRD launched the review, a provincial judge threw out a drunk driving charge against a woman who was forced to remove her bra while she was in custody. While the local detachment in Chatham-Kent said they were concerned a bra might be used to self-strangulate, the Ontario Provincial Police said the practice was far from routine.

McNeilly said his review will also make recommendations to clarify strip search policies.

Update: MCSCS said the ministry is not directly involved in operational policing matters.

"However, the Adequacy and Effectiveness of Police Services Regulation under the Police Services Act requires a police services board to have a policy on search of persons, and requires the Chief of Police to establish procedures that address the circumstances in which an officer may undertake a search of a person, including strip/complete searches.

"It is the ministry’s expectation that local police services are establishing practices and procedures that respect the dignity of the individuals that are strip searched," a ministry spokesperson said in an email.

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‘Where is MCSCS?’: Ontario police chiefs wonder over lack of strip search rules

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