Shawn Devine says in the past, policing was simply about interviewing a witness and getting the facts.
“Everyone has a different story and a different version but we always talk that it is the thread of truth that runs through it, so somebody seeing it from the left angle sees it differently from the right angle,” said Devine.
“If you look at it and you compare it there is always the commonality in it.”
The North Bay Police Chief says there are intangibles when it comes to gathering that information. One of those intangibles is the way trauma impacts the victim.
“I think for the longest time, policing has not recognized that we have to understand that people impacted by serious trauma, present in different ways. I think historically that’s been viewed where somebody has a change in what they are telling, discrediting what they have previously said. I think what professionals are saying is yes, people may well change their story, but that is not because they are not telling the truth, it is because their memory may be altered and it may take some time to actually recognize and realize what is happening.”
Devine says in the past, police have traditionally felt they needed to do the interview and gather the information as quickly as possible.
“What we are learning now is that may not be the best case, that people need to digest what happened to them. They need some time to think about it to provide the best information,” said Devine.
See related: Police react to North Bay's striking unfounded sexual assault rates
That process becomes a bigger challenge when officers are dealing with traumatized sexual assault victims.
“Often times people are not going to the police because they want somebody to pay for the crime or they want somebody put in jail. They want somebody to believe them and I think that is the biggest thing that we have to, as police officers, look at,” said Devine.
“We need to create an environment so that when a victim comes forward or a survivor comes forward and they want to tell their story, we provide them with that atmosphere to do it. First of all, it is nonjudgmental, that they are going to be believed. The end result may lead to a charge but at least that person leaves the police station saying, ‘yes, I have told my story and the police believe me in what I am saying.’ So that is a totally different outlook than it has been in the past.”
Devine says the service is working harder at getting its officers better trained for dealing with situations like that.
“I have reached out to the Ontario Police College and Canadian Police College and there is not something right now that you can pull off the shelf, so we are hoping to be able to provide, first of all, our people in criminal investigations with that kind of training and then the next step would be to start providing that training to all of our frontline officers,” said Devine.
Mary White is a public educator and client advocate at Amelia Rising. She believes police officers need to be more educated when dealing with sexual assault victims.
“We know what the issue is so we need our police to be trauma-informed because you cannot question survivors the way you question a person who perpetrated a crime,” said White during a Women’s Day media event back in March.
“Survivors are already going through so much trauma and there needs to be more consent in the process. ‘Is now a good time and are you ready to do this interview right now?’ These are your rights. You have a right to have a victim services person to sit here with you, those things are not really made clear here to our survivors and we need better, and our survivors deserve better.”
