Ottawa police employees told an independent investigator that police workplace culture continues to penalize them for reporting their colleagues' bad behaviour, that women are sexually objectified and that racialized officers are unfairly scrutinized for the same behaviour of their white counterparts.
The findings come from a workplace assessment jointly commissioned by the police board and police service as part of their efforts to address internal workplace sexual violence and harassment.
Employment law firm Rubin Thomlinson LLP was hired to conduct a pilot project in 2020. That project was first launched in May of that year, just months after one of the service's own deputy chiefs was charged with misconduct for allegations of sexual harassment and unwanted touching. Deputy Chief Uday Jaswal now faces charges related to three female employees.
In addition to the workplace assessment, the project also included the law firm acting as an independent investigator that screened and then investigated harassment complaints within the service. All of the findings detailed in a 76-page report publicly released this week relate to the workplace assessment only.
Rubin Thomlinson was previously hired by the CBC to investigate how it handled allegations made against former CBC employee Jian Ghomeshi.
The firm conducted 116 interviews with both officer and civilian...
In a 2017 piece in The New York Times, voting expert Ari Berman wrote, “The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed tactics that prevented blacks, Hispanics and other minority groups from voting. But fo...