Top Investigator Richard Rosenthal with Herald reporter Joe Fries at RDOS Board meeting
Rosenthal was a busy man Thursday meeting with a squad of RCMP officers early in the morning before speaking to a Regional District committee.
Rosenthal is the Director of an $8.2 Million budget that employs 50 full time staff including 32 investigators – the mandate to look into report of deaths or serious injury of any person who comes in contact with people in BC governed by the Police Act.
Director Rosenthal hails from the US serving as a prosecutor in Los Angeles and then in police oversite jobs in Portland and Denver. He didn’t think they would hire an American here but thought the job was great as BC was leading the way in North America in the oversight of serious incidents involving police personnel.
He started the job in 2012 and so far 223 case have been looked into – 118 serious investigations but only 8 criminal cases resulted.
In the RDOS only two cases – one in Princeton and one in Penticton have come to the attention of the IIO office.
Rosenthal states that one of unintended consequences of his office is that other police agencies have more time to investigate cold case murder files and other serious police matters.
Mandate
The Independent Investigations Office of BC (IIO) is mandated to conduct investigations into police-related incidents of death or serious harm in order to determine whether or not an officer may have committed an offence.
Incidents of serious harm include injury that may result in death, may cause serious disfigurement or may cause substantial loss or impairment of mobility of the body as a whole or of the function of any limb or organ.
The IIO’s jurisdiction extends to officers appointed as special provincial constables, the Stl’atl’imx Tribal Police, municipal constables and members of the RCMP in BC, both on and off duty.
The IIO, the RCMP and other police services in British Columbia all conduct investigations pursuant to the Criminal Code and other statutes.
The Police Act requires police to notify the IIO of an incident that may fall within the jurisdiction of the IIO, and further requires police to secure the scene of the incident until an IIO Investigator arrives. This process is referred to as a “notification”.