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A catch-and-release justice system is not working for Canadians: Lewis
January 7, 2023
Peace tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, June 1, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

According to Google, the meaning of 'catch and release' is "when a fish is caught and then returned to the water unharmed so that it survives and continues its existence in its natural environment." That might be very appropriate when referring to walleye and trout, but it is not working for Canadian society when it comes to violent offenders.


When Christopher Husbands entered the Toronto Eaton Centre in June 2012 and subsequently killed two people and wounded five others, he was on bail following an arrest for sexual assault. He was a known gang member. Successive Toronto Police Chiefs have publicly reported cases of gang violence committed while the members were already out on bail for violent offences.


Umar Zameer, a Toronto man charged with the murder of a Toronto police Const. Jeffrey Northrup, in July 2021, was eventually released on bail. The court is betting that he won't kill another cop.


Mohammed Majidpour of Vancouver had been convicted 30 times for such offences as assault with a weapon and uttering threats but was still released on bail when arrested for assaulting a woman with a pole in September 2022. He's been released and arrested several times since. This guy gets out before the arresting officer finishes typing the report.


Myles Sanderson had been paroled two-thirds of the way through his four-year, four-month sentence for threats, robbery, assault with a weapon and assaulting a police officer, despite being assessed as high-risk to re-offend with violence. He had fifty-nine criminal convictions in his relatively short life and was a wanted parole violator when he stabbed eleven people to death in the James Cree Nation in Saskatchewan in September 2022.


Most recently, OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique publicly said he was "outraged" that one of the accused murderers of Haldimand OPP Const. Greg Pierzchala was out on bail for firearms charges and for assaulting a police officer at the time of the killing. One has to ask themselves, "Would Const. Pierzchala have been murdered if Randall McKenzie had still been in custody?" Commissioner Carrique's feelings are obvious, as I'm sure are those of the thousands of police officers that attended this wonderful young officer's funeral on Wednesday.


This issue is as old as the hills and comes from the failings of various governments, but in my view, the past several years have seemingly been the worst period for government decision-making that negatively impacts public safety in my 45-year connection with law enforcement.


Their Bill C-5 resulted in some mandatory minimum penalties being repealed, including several firearms offences. Offences like discharging a firearm with intent, using a firearm or imitation firearm in the commission of offence and robbery with a firearm. You know, those run-of-the-mill crimes that are of little risk to the public or police. At a time when violent crime and the use of illegal firearms are historically high in Canada, the decision was made to go soft on gun crime. But don't worry, we're cracking down on those legal gun owners that have been through background checks and training courses. How often are those people a threat?


At the same time, changes around bail consideration within Bill C-75 potentially allow more violent criminals to be released awaiting trial, particularly when "circumstances of Indigenous accused and of accused from vulnerable populations are considered at bail, in order to address the disproportionate impacts that the bail system has on these populations." I get that there are disproportionate representations of Indigenous people and people of colour in our court and prison systems. There is a host of socio-economic issues that need to be dealt with in a long-term strategy to address this disparity, but regardless of an offender's race, colour or difficult lives, the public and police need to be protected from those who commit crimes of violence, as much as reasonably possible.


I am not advocating that accused persons should be held without bail on a whim. I appreciate that, in most cases, being held awaiting trial may mean years of incarceration in a judicial system that moves at glacial speed. That flies in the face of the basic principle that people are innocent until proven guilty.


In the majority of criminal cases, the release of the accused on bail is obviously not a risk to public safety, like a first-time charge for a minor assault stemming from a bar fight. Obviously, there is no need to limit their pre-trial freedom. At the other end of the scale are pathological killers who are a serious threat to community safety and must be held.


And then there are cases in the middle that reasonably could go either way, but currently, the rights of the accused seem to trump the rights of potential victims to personal safety. The question for court officials becomes, where is the line in the middle?


When it comes to both bail and parole considerations, the scales need to be much more balanced to protect the public and police and not slanted to protect the rights of the accused. At this point, they are tipped too far the other way.


The other question is, why is our system so painstakingly slow? In cases where accused violent offenders are denied bail, an expedited process is obviously in their best interests and the best thing for the community as a whole.


Besides the obvious bail concerns, having trials occur much quicker will be better for all players – victims, accused, witnesses and police officers. Various provinces have tried to speed things up, however I'm not aware of any significant success stories thus far. Trial processes still tend to drag on forever, and some serious charges of violence have been dropped because they have taken too long to be heard.


I'm not suggesting that the U.S. has the perfect system by any means, but often people there are charged with serious crimes, then tried and either convicted or absolved within a year. The police officer that killed George Floyd in Minnesota was brought to trial and sentenced to jail in less than a year of being charged.


Our entire judicial system needs to be reformed – federally in terms of legislation governing bail, sentencing and parole, and then province by province to seek more effective, safe and speedier processes.



The time to tip the scales back is long overdue on all fronts so that the system errs on the side of public safety. We're talking about dangerous people here, not fish that occasionally bite a worm. Catch and release must end.

Leadership involves risk, especially in policing

By Chris Lewis • March 28, 2026
Leadership is inundated with risk, every hour of every day, in all sectors. In policing, legislative authorities and established policy are the ever-present guideposts, but occasionally policy just doesn’t apply. At times someone has to just make a decision to do something, or not, or they will fail the public they serve and the personnel it is their duty to lead. If it goes bad, time to own up, do damage control, learn from it and move forward. It always frightened me when I saw some at the senior executive level in policing think that supervisors and managers operate in a pristine little bubble where nothing should ever go wrong. Then when it did because some supervisor tried their best to make something work for all the right reasons, they wanted to pigeon-hole the person that took the risk. There were times during my own career when executives were not encouraged to take any risk either. In fact, taking risk was career risk in itself. Despite the best of intentions, if it went bad, the one ‘responsible’ be forever labelled as having failed. Even if the gamble went well, the jaundiced eyes from above would still forever look at them as being a potential liability. It became the “Oh, him. He’s the one that...” At times the daily decision making of high-level commanders would be second-guessed by those in the executive suites – some of whom had never really commanded anything. My buddy retired Chief Wayne Frechette used to describe these folks as: “They’ve never been out after dark on company time.” I know this same concept was alive in many other police services. Some at executive levels actually did serve in operational roles at some point but they never took a risk. Somehow, they were fortunate to skate through difficult situations through sheer luck as opposed to good decision-making and never developed any scar tissue along the way. They didn’t learn from failure – they survived by luck. They also were viewed by weak executives above them as being golden because there was never a milli-second of negativity around them. They were Teflon. But those that worked under their “command” (for lack of a better word) had no respect for them. They simply watched them walk around with coffee in hand, never leaving the office or making a decision. It wasn’t leadership, but it did pave the way to stardom from on high, for some. True leaders do take risks at times. Many I worked with and for did it all and did it well. They did so in the best interests of those they served and those they led, because it wasn’t about themselves, but was done in the service of those that placed their trust in them. Policy simply doesn’t fit every situation. It is most often a guide that anticipates most circumstances that employees will face, particularly the more common (high-frequency) ones. But it cannot predict every possible scenario. When that happens in policing, it can occur in very unlikely situations (low-frequency) that are incredibly high-risk. Supervisors cannot say “Sorry folks, the book doesn’t cover this one” and run away crying. They also don’t have time to tell bad guys, “Hey big fella, sit tight. We need to take a pause here and get the whiteboard out so we can have a group-think about how to stop your murderous rampage.” I think that many pseudo-leaders – far too many, are afraid to make risky decisions out of fear that an error will jeopardize their career. Instead, they risk their careers by not making decisions. Or as I like to say: “their fear of career-risk, risks their careers.” This can be fatal in the policing world. When a police supervisor shirks their responsibilities or quivers, sucks their thumb, and prays for the situation to go away, thankfully constables will come forward and do their best to get their teammates through it. Sometimes that ends well and when the supervisor emerges from their fear-induced coma, they will more often than not take credit for the success. But when the situation goes to hell-in-a-handbasket – despite best efforts, the pseudo-leader will document the risk-taking employee and add another bullet-point to their list of things they’ve done to “hold people accountable.” The panel at their next promotional interview will likely hear the false rendition proudly told. I hear examples of this practise from serving police officers across North America on a much too frequent basis. True leaders develop a culture of trust among those they lead that their suggestions and feedback are encouraged and valued. Their confidence that the leader wants their input encourages them to constantly analyze situations and give thought to what policy says and the options available when policy says nothing. That is good for the employee’s development and may save the leader’s hind-end and the continuity of the team on occasion when an employee steps forward in a crisis. Having said that, there will clearly be situations where there isn’t time for the whiteboard, and a decision needs to be made by the responsible “leader.” When it doesn’t work out, the real leader will step forward and be accountable. But when it does go well, the true leader will allow the light to shine on the team they have the honour to lead. In my view, we’re not seeing enough of that in North American policing. We need more genuine leaders at all levels of law enforcement organizations. Developing and promoting real leaders that can manage risk effectively is a must. Anything less fails everyone.

Why Joint Forces Operations Are No Longer Optional

By Chris Lewis • March 26, 2026
They used to be simply a "nice to have."

Police investigating police: Is there another option?

By Chris Lewis • March 18, 2026
The March 17 th announcement by the Toronto Police Service (TPS) regarding the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) investigation into allegations by an Ontario Justice that three TPS officers colluded and lied during a 2024 murder trial against a man that ran over and killed TPS Constable Jeffrey Northrup in 2021, has further inflamed the debate over who should investigate alleged police wrongdoing. This instance combined with the recent arrests and ongoing police investigation into several TPS officers for their alleged involvement with organized crime, has brought this discussion to a boiling point. I appreciate the public perceptions around this investigative model given that the average citizen doesn’t necessarily understand the professionalism and commitment of police investigative teams like the recent OPP Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB) group. I have all the confidence the world in that team, but I also personally know the ability and integrity of the OPP Detective Inspector in-charge. So, if these investigations aren’t carried out by police, who will do them? They do not fall under the mandate of the Ontario Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which by the way is largely comprised of former police criminal investigators and forensic identification experts, many of whom investigated homicides in police services. For SIU to assume a larger role, they would have to grow exponentially and expand their team of ‘former cops’. These cases generally do not fall under the purview of Ontario’s Inspectorate of Policing either. They would loosely fall under the oversight role of Ontario’s Law Enforcement Complaints Agency (LECA), who is responsible for receiving, managing and overseeing public complaints against police, but frankly they don’t have mandate or the horsepower to conduct complex criminal investigations. They oversee the “public complaints” that may lead to a criminal investigation, but the investigation would be the responsibility of a police service to conduct. An expansion of the LECA would require a tremendous amount of funding and human resources, most of whom would also be former police officers. Hiring and training civilians to conduct such investigations is an option, but largely an incomprehensible one. Police criminal investigators are trained officers that generally start out as uniformed officers responding to occurrences and investigating more routine and less serious crimes, i.e. minor assaults and property crimes. They build investigative expertise over time, including in interviewing and interrogation; gathering and securing physical evidence; legal processes like obtaining judicial authorizations; presenting evidence in court; and various investigative strategies. They learn how to work with special police units that provide specific investigative skills, and more. All of this doesn’t happen overnight, but over a period of years and with the tutelage of more experienced investigators along that journey. Trying to turn a group of young and well-educated civilians – no matter how intelligent and well-intended, into a team of elite investigators, would be a complete disaster and unfair to the public or to the officers being investigated. Over my many years as a member or as the Director of the OPP CIB, my colleagues and I investigated criminal allegations against cops from other agencies. Before the SIU was formed, we investigated officers from many Ontario police services – large and small, who had used deadly force. Many were cleared and a number were arrested and charged. We also investigated criminal allegations against police chiefs in Ontario. Again, several were appropriately cleared, and some were brought before the courts. Municipal, provincial and federal elected officials were similarly investigated and some charged. Our members also investigated police officers in other provinces, including high-ranking ones. I personally investigated two Royal Newfoundland Constabulary officers that were involved in an arrest that result in the death of a suspect. They were properly exonerated, but I would have charged them in a heartbeat if they had wrongfully killed than man. I arrested an OPP Sergeant for sexual assault. A CIB colleague investigated and arrested two different OPP officers for criminal offences. Both of those officers had been personal friends of mine and years later committed suicide. There are tons of similar examples that I can refer to over my career. All of these involved the oversight and legal analysis of a Crown Attorney, sometimes from another province. The interesting thing, and what most of the anti-police folks will never believe, is that in every single one of those investigations, the dialogue that I was involved in with other officers that I worked with or supervised, involved doing what was right. In other words, “If the allegation is substantiated, we will put the case together, arrest them and put them before the courts.” Not even once, did we think about or do anything that would give an officer a pass when they committed a criminal offence. Never. I have every confidence in the world that the vast majority of municipal and RCMP colleagues across Canada would operate under the same guiding principle. Has the occasional officer worked in conflict with that approach? Undoubtedly. Were some investigators not as committed or capable as they should be and perhaps did a poor investigation accidentally or deliberately? Quite likely so. But I truly believe those cases are the exception, not the rule in criminal investigations. Where I more often believe poor investigations or deliberate attempts to inappropriately give a colleague a break continues to occur, is in Police Act investigations, where policy or employee harassment wrongdoings are suspected. I like to think that the focus on that continues to improve, but not fast enough in some cases. Sadly, I know now that unbeknownst to me at the time, it happened under my watch. A focus for my next article. The public and police deserve the very best of investigators to ensure that bad cops are effectively put out of business and good officers are cleared. If there’s another effective option that would appease the doubting public – aside from using current officers from other agencies or creating a new and costly entity that would be staffed by former police officers, I’d like to hear it.