If Greater Sudbury Police were investigating something as serious as a sudden death linked to a fire in your neighbourhood, would you ever know about it?
Not necessarily, given what Sudbury.com has learned about Greater Sudbury Police Service’s current approach to sharing details about their day-to-day work.
On Dec. 3, 2023, city police were dispatched to a wooded area near North Field Crescent in response to a sudden death. A brush fire had broken out at an encampment, where firefighters found a deceased person.
No media releases or public notification of any kind were issued by GSPS.
That was, until after local journalists were made aware of the situation and began inquiring about it more than a month later.
On Jan. 10, 2024, GSPS spokesperson Kaitlynn Dunn responded to Sudbury.com’s inquiry, confirmed the sudden death and clarified the investigation was being led by the Coroner’s Office.
Other sudden deaths occurred around that time, and were reported.
On Jan. 18, GSPS issued a media release about a death investigation after someone was found deceased in an alleyway on Frood Road the previous afternoon, but only after local journalists began reporting on the death.
On Jan. 11, GSPS issued a media release regarding a sudden death in a parking lot off of Martindale Road, where a 57-year-old was struck and killed by a vehicle.
So, why not the Dec. 3 sudden death?
Police respond to hundreds of sudden deaths per year, Dunn told Sudbury.com.
In the Dec. 3 incident, she said, “There's nothing criminal, there’s nothing suspicious regarding the situation, the individual is identified and we aren't looking to the public for any further information regarding the incident.”
A media release was issued regarding the Frood Road incident, she explained, because “multiple agencies” reached out seeking information.
Curious about how the local police service decides what is and isn’t fit for the public to know about, Sudbury.com attempted what we thought would be simple: Get a copy of the GSPS media policy. Turns out, it wasn’t that simple.
Nothing dictates what GSPS must share publicly
Although various statistics are compiled for police board meetings, such as annual crime numbers and use of force data, the day-to-day activity of GSPS is largely unknown to the public.
Most of what local journalists report on about the daily activities of GSPS comes from the few media releases they issue, social media posts, tips from the public and what they happen to witness firsthand.
When it comes to police services issuing media releases, Dunn said, “There’s no standard through the province of what has to be released.”
As such, the information released varies from police service to police service.
“There’s no specific practice where this is going to be reported on, unless it’s a matter of public safety. Then, it is always going to be reported,” Dunn said.
Police, she added, have access to a lot of information.
“Not only are there investigations that have to go through the court process we don’t want to impact, but there are survivors, there are victims’ families. All that has to be considered when we’re releasing this information into the public.”
Sudbury.com sent an inquiry to the Attorney General’s communications department and Attorney General’s Office spokesperson Andrew Kennedy seeking additional clarity on police services’ responsibilities when it comes to communications, but did not receive a response. This is not uncommon for Government of Ontario agencies.
We also requested an interview with both GSPS Chief Paul Pedersen and Dunn regarding this story immediately following a police board meeting in January. After the meeting, Dunn requested we interview Mayor Paul Lefebvre about an unrelated topic first while she talked to Pedersen.
By the end of Sudbury.com’s one-minute interview with Lefebvre, Pedersen had left the room, leaving just Dunn available for the interview.
GSPS less forthcoming than other police services
GSPS releases fewer media releases than at least two Ontario police organizations roughly comparable in the population base they serve: Barrie (population 147,829) and Guelph (population 143,740). GSPS serves a population base of 166,004 people.
This, despite Greater Sudbury’s violent crime severity index hitting a record high of 137.9 last year, which is significantly higher than Barrie’s 70.5 and Guelph’s 67.3.
To put this into context, while the Nickel City has a much higher violent crime rate than these two comparable communities, GSPS allows the public to know far less about what their officers are doing on a day-to-day basis.
For a direct comparison between police services, Sudbury.com compared media release output on each police organization’s website.
Greater Sudbury Police Service issued 123 media releases on their website in 2023. Barrie issued 213 and Guelph issued approximately 350.
The majority of media releases relate to specific criminal activity.
Of Barrie’s 213 releases of information, approximately 28 were not specific to criminal activity or safety incidents, and instead were about such things as fundraisers, safety tips and job postings. Of the 123 media releases issued by GSPS, approximately 27 — a much higher proportion — fell into this category.
Guelph Police Service removes most media releases from their website after a month, their media spokesperson clarified to Sudbury.com, so we were unable to break down the nature of their 2023 releases. However, the vast majority of recent media releases are about criminal and public safety incidents.
Guelph Police issue a media release every day, Monday to Friday, except holidays, with occasional standalone releases for more serious crimes, missing persons and other time-sensitive issues, the spokesperson told Sudbury.com.
“The anticipated number each year remains fairly static, that being approximately 250 daily releases (total in the year, summarizing each day’s notable cases), plus about 100 stand-alones, assuming we have a couple each week,” they said.
In February 2024, Guelph Police Service issued 32 media releases, which doesn’t capture the total number of individual criminal/safety incidents reported within the releases.
Each regular daily media release by Guelph police includes more than one incident. The Feb. 29 media release, for example, included “Car owner nearly run over during theft,” “Man arrested in road rage spitting,” and, “Ram pickup stolen.” With this in mind, Guelph’s degree of publicly shared information regarding incidents police deal with easily dwarfs that of both Greater Sudbury and Barrie police services.
OPP North East Region (which covers a wide swath of the province’s northeast) issued 83 media releases in February, including 13 out of the Nipissing West (Sudbury) detachment, 13 from Nipissing West (West Nipissing), 12 from North Bay and seven from Manitoulin.
GSPS had issued four on their website. Counting updates to past media releases (which GSPS adds to the original releases, and for which there were 11 to the disappearance of Ward 2 Coun. Michael Vagnini), there were 16.
Police services also communicate directly to the public through posts on social media platforms.
Year-to-date to the afternoon of Feb. 27, GSPS issued 91 Facebook posts and 162 posts to X (formerly Twitter). There’s a great deal of overlap between these posts, with X also including numerous brief updates to incidents.
Barrie Police Service issued 111 Facebook posts and 119 posts to Twitter, while Guelph issued 65 Facebook posts and 87 posts to X.
Although GSPS led the pack in total posts, they trailed behind when it came to information about incidents police were dealing with, including missing persons. Of this type of post, GSPS issued 21 Facebook posts and 45 posts to X (including 19 incident updates).
Barrie issued 51 Facebook posts about incidents, and 53 incidents posts on X, while Guelph issued a respective 48 and 60. The vast majority of both Barrie and Guelph’s incident posts to X are individual incidents, as neither police force posts as many updates as GSPS does. Guelph’s figures are also bolstered by the fact that many of them are media releases including more than one incident reported per release.
Alongside 21 Facebook posts related to incidents, GSPS published 48 posts which Sudbury.com classified as promotional, eight posts classified as statistics and 14 posts with safety tips.
The 162 posts to X by GSPS included 77 promotional posts, 26 incident posts, 19 incident updates, eight statistics posts and 32 safety tips.
Greater Sudbury Police are also less transparent than some other police agencies when it comes to what takes place during police board meetings.
In October, Sudbury.com missed a police board meeting regarding their 2024-25 budget, and requested a recording of the meeting. In addition to denying our interview request at the time, Dunn said meetings are not recorded. This, despite the fact these meetings are livestreamed.
Videos of Barrie Police Board meetings are posted online on YouTube, where they stream live and remain available after the fact, with posted meetings dating back to Nov. 19, 2020.
Inconsistent information from GSPS
A related issue Sudbury.com sought clarity on from GSPS is how the police service decides to distribute information. We wanted to understand why some information is shared through a press release while other information is shared using a post on Facebook or X, with seemingly no clear strategy for why one method or platform is chosen over another for any given piece of information.
Dunn told Sudbury.com that how GSPS shares information is not arbitrary between media releases posted on their website, media releases emailed to local media outlets, and information posted to their X and Facebook accounts.
However, there doesn’t appear to be much consistency.
At noon on Sunday, Jan. 28, GSPS sent a media release by email to local journalists sharing that Greater Sudbury city council member Michael Vagnini was considered a missing person. A similar notice was posted to their X page around the same time.
It wasn’t until Monday morning that news regarding Vagnini’s disappearance was posted to the GSPS Facebook page and website.
GSPS issued updates to their initial media release noting that the search for Vagnini was ongoing. The first update was posted to their Twitter account, but their second was not.
On Jan. 26, GSPS posted two notices for missing persons on both Facebook and X pages for people named Gloria and Robert.
On Jan. 27, two follow-up posts were made to Twitter indicating that both Gloria and Robert had been located in good health.
The two original Facebook posts from Jan. 26, which indicated the two were missing, were not updated to indicate they had been located until 8:22 a.m. on Jan. 29.
GSPS sets up information roadblocks
Befitting a story about GSPS transparency, Sudbury.com came across an information roadblocks while putting this story together.
The first was our request for a copy of the GSPS media policy, which Dunn said would fall under a media procedure for GSPS and a policy for the police board.
She declined to share the documents with Sudbury.com, and said our request would have to go through the Freedom of Information process.
This, despite a quick Google search revealing various other police organizations in Ontario have made their media relations policies public by posting them online. Click here for the Hamilton Police Services board policy, here for the Haldimand County Police Services Board policy, and here for the Toronto Police Services policy.
The City of Greater Sudbury provided a copy of their media procedures to Sudbury.com upon request, without having to go through the Freedom of Information process.
Sudbury.com requested evidence Dunn was prohibited from providing the documents directly to us, but she declined to provide any. A Freedom of Information request was submitted, and was granted three weeks later.
While Sudbury.com was waiting to receive GSPS media procedures/policies, we were able to gain some insight regarding them through two points of unrelated correspondence with GSPS.
Both examples point to a centralized communications strategy.
Following the Jan. 24 police board meeting, board administrator Matthew Gatien sent Sudbury.com an email which read: “A friendly reminder that the Chair is the Board’s designated media spokesperson unless he delegates that role to another Board member, so I would ask that questions following the Board meeting be directed to the Chair.”
(Sudbury.com’s journalists do not adhere to any outside agency’s media relations policy.)
The other piece of correspondence came from Dunn in response to an interview request with a police officer in charge of a case we were seeking information on. The request was denied, with Dunn noting, “Our frontline officers do not do media interviews on specific incidents/investigations.”
Dunn indicated she would provide details on the incident in question.
What the GSPS media relations procedures/policy say
The GSPS media relations procedures and police board communications and media relations policy cost Sudbury.com $20 to receive, including what they described as a half-hour of staff work to process the request. Both policies arrived in their entirety, unredacted.
Both documents point to the top-down communications strategy GSPS has been employing, as well as how regimented their messaging to the public is.
The 16-page GSPS media relations procedures dictate that media inquiries are to go through the communications office, with the on-duty staff sergeant taking care of media calls outside of regular business hours.
“Only those members of the service who have the appropriate authority shall release information on behalf of the service to the media,” and members who contact media in their personal capacity “shall not disclose any reference to being a member of the Service or discuss their actions and/or involvement in the subject matter.”
Only the chief of police, deputy chiefs, CAO, superintendent, executive services staff sergeants and communications co-ordinator are allowed to release information to the media, and thereby the public.
Any member can request permission to participate in a media interview, however, if granted, a senior officer or communications co-ordinator “shall accompany” them “where it is considered appropriate or required.”
As such, although Dunn told Sudbury.com, “Our frontline officers do not do media interviews on specific incidents/investigations,” this is a choice and is not prohibited by official procedure.
“Where possible,” the communications co-ordinator shall be notified of media conferences two weeks in advance, including pertinent details of the subject matter. The co-ordinator should also be provided speaking notes for the chief or designate no later than one week in advance of the conference.
The procedures also clarify that “no comment” shall never be used with media, and to instead use phrases such as “disclosure of that information would be detrimental to the investigation.”
The police board media policy notes that the spokesperson for the board is the chair, and that if the chair is unavailable, the vice-chair shall be the spokesperson. Other members may be designated as spokesperson in special circumstances.
However, there’s nothing in the board’s media policy that prohibits members from speaking to the media. There’s also nothing prohibiting board members from publicly disagreeing with positions taken by the board, as long as they clearly identify they are speaking on behalf of themselves as an individual.
GSPS and its reputation of secrecy
What Sudbury.com learned about GSPS, including its limited transparency compared to other police services and their use of information roadblocks, doesn’t appear to be anything new.
In February 2020, The Canadian Association of Journalists took note of GSPS’s information roadblocks, naming them as one of a handful of police agencies to receive a Cone of Silence Award.
The award was given annually “to call public attention to government departments and agencies that put extra effort into denying public access to government information to which the public has a right under access to information legislation.”
At the time, The Globe and Mail sought information about where the guns in Canadian crime came from, submitting access to information requests to 36 police forces across Canada.
Most didn’t collect data, and three police forces that did, including GSPS, indicated there would be significant fees for their data and long waits. The Globe reported that GSPS asked for the largest fee, at $26,460.
As evidenced by the amount of information GSPS releases regarding their day-to-day operations, which leave Greater Sudburians deeper in the dark than at least two comparable police services, they don’t appear to have changed course toward stronger transparency in subsequent years.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
