A Windsor man is looking for additional answers in the wake of the controversy surrounding a 911 call made from the home of the police chief.
Greg Lemay has filed a complaint with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) over the way Windsor police and the city's police services board responded to a call concerning a domestic issue at the home of Police Chief Al Frederick.
Officers were called to the Windsor home the chief shares with his wife on the morning of November 12, 2018. Frederick has confirmed that police visited his home but has refused to discuss what the nature of the call was.
Lemay told BlackburnNewsWindsor.com that his complaint is not directed toward any one person, including the chief or Mayor Drew Dilkens, but to the board that has oversight of the Windsor Police Service.
"It's a matter of the police services board not, in my opinion, doing what they're supposed to be doing," said Lemay. "They should have immediately gone to an independent source. They went to the OPP nine days later."
Ontario Provincial Police was brought in to conduct an independent review of the circumstances surrounding the 911 call and how the police handled it. After two days of investigating, a 14-page report was released that cleared the police service of wrongdoing.
Dilkens, who has also been bearing the brunt of controversy in his role as head of the police services board, responded to the growing calls for answers when he released on Friday two redacted pages of the report.
https://twitter.com/drewdilkens/status/1099064985886642176
The mayor has not commented on the issue other than to say that officers handled it appropriately and the matter was closed. As for the nine-day gap, Dilkens said that that period of time was needed for all parties involved to gather the information and that provincial privacy law would not allow his office to discuss details of the call. Members of the police services board, including Councillor Jo-Anne Gignac, have not spoken publicly about the issue. Lemay said the silence of the board only has residents asking more questions.
"At this point, I'm looking at it as 'We've left it open for interpretation', but everybody's interpretation can be different," said Lemay. "People are questioning the integrity of the service, which I don't think is fair to the men and women actually doing the work on the street."
Lemay said the silence of the board is not acceptable and leads people to believe there's more to the situation than they are letting on. He said accountability needs to be a two-way street.
"You're talking about a police chief here that started Project Accountability, holding his own rank-and-file to a certain line of transparency and accountability, and at this point, I'm not sure that the team standard is being met on his end," said Lemay.
Lemay said the OIPRD will examine the complaint sent in, and it will eventually be turned over to the Ontario Civilian Police Commission (OCPC), which oversees policing in general in the province.
---with files from Allanah Wills---