RCMP OFFICER INVOLVED HIMSELF IN ADULT SON'S SUSPENSION.
Does a Member cross a line if they use their status to intervene in the actions of another law enforcement agency?
Blue Line shares this New Brunswick incident.
“RCMP members are expected to hold themselves to a high moral and professional standard,” Ouellette wrote. “We understand and respect the impact it can have on public trust when there is any allegation that a member has not met the standard that our communities deserve.”
Jan. 14, 2026, Sussex, N.B. – The agency that investigates police in New Brunswick has ruled there are no grounds for criminal charges against a Sussex RCMP officer who allegedly contacted provincial officials over issues with his son’s impaired driving suspension.
In a report announced Dec. 15, SIRT director Erin Nauss wrote that the officer, who submitted complaints using his rank and position and had a colleague draw up an analysis on police letterhead detailing issues with the case, believed he was acting in the public good.
But a UNB law professor says it’s a “very troubling decision” because it fails to detail how there could have been a legitimate reason for the man to act in his role as a police officer.
“In this case, neither of the two officers were acting within their role, in fact they were acting against their instructions,” Benjamin Perryman, associate professor at the UNB Faculty of Law, told Brunswick News. “It was illegitimate conduct right from the get go.”
Advertisement
The report, dated Dec. 12, covers an investigation of a Sussex RCMP officer and a Caledona RCMP officer running from June 19 to Oct. 9 this year for breach of trust and obstruction of justice.
According to the report, the case centres around an immediate roadside suspension issued to an officer’s adult son Feb. 11 by a provincial conservation officer with the Department of Justice and Public Safety (JPS), who had been responding to a single-vehicle collision in Henderson Settlement, N.B.
In January, amendments to the province’s Motor Vehicle Act came into effect that gave peace officers the ability to issue a 15-month suspension and impound a person’s vehicle when they fail a roadside screening test as an alternative to criminal charges. A dozen of those suspensions were withdrawn after a Court of King’s Bench ruling in September that found that the appeal process breached a man’s right to procedural fairness, Brunswick News previously reported.
According to the report, the conservation officer pulled over Feb. 11 to help a vehicle in a ditch, and after the driver failed a roadside screening test, the officer chose to issue a suspension, the report said. The driver’s father, an RCMP officer, came to the scene in a marked police car and was told not to get involved, but was allowed to drive his son home, according to the report.
According to SIRT spokesperson Khalehla Perrault, the officer was with the Sussex RCMP.
Advertisement
The officer told SIRT that his son had identified errors with how he was handled, and later in the month, another JPS officer ran into his father at the RCMP detachment and told him he was critical of immediate roadside suspensions and how the incident was handled, the report said.
A few days after the incident, the RCMP officer’s supervisor conferred with a staff sergeant, who told him the officer could use the appeal process but not use his RCMP name or position, according to the report. The supervisor told the officer that the RCMP “could not assist him and that he should consider the appeal process and reach out to a lawyer,” Nauss wrote in the report.
The driver’s appeal of the suspension was denied, according to the report, with the officer telling SIRT that the notice of denial had an error that specified the wrong agency.
In March, the driver’s father allegedly contacted JPS four times: in civilian clothes at a JPS office March 11, when he asked to speak to a supervisor; in uniform on March 19, when he approached the conservation officer at the RCMP detachment and asked to talk “off the record”; the same day, when he called a civilian JPS staffer and sent in a letter protesting the denial with an RCMP signature; and in civilian clothes March 21, when he met with a JPS supervisor and “implied the file was wrongly handled and it should be discarded,” Nauss wrote in the report.
Advertisement
A member of JPS leadership told SIRT in June that the officer had filed a complaint with the department, which referred to himself by RCMP rank and title, and which included a case analysis written by a fellow RCMP officer who concluded the suspension was not valid.
The JPS higher-up told SIRT “that while he thought the case analysis was well done, it was unusual for the RCMP to have completed a case analysis for a member’s son,” Nauss wrote in the report. The JPS higher-up then contacted the staff sergeant with his concerns, who told the RCMP officer June 18 to stop using his rank and title in connection with the matter, and contacted SIRT the next day.
In interviews with SIRT, the father said he had been discussing the case with a second officer who was working overtime in Sussex, who offered to review the file.
The second officer described the analysis to SIRT as informal notes that were not intended to be shared, but Nauss notes that the analysis was detailed and was printed on RCMP letterhead, with the officer’s name and regiment number. A third officer told SIRT he had been approached by the second officer to help with the review, and that he told the second officer to “stay away from this and not get involved,” Nauss wrote in the report.
The father told SIRT that his communication with JPS officers was an attempt to follow the chain of command to have his concerns addressed informally rather than filing a formal complaint, the report said.
“When asked why he used his RCMP rank and employment in his correspondence, he stated that is who he is and he didn’t realize the perception it was creating,” Nauss wrote in the report. “He also stated that as a police officer, he had concerns about the file and had a duty to report those concerns.”
Nauss wrote that according to a 2006 Supreme Court ruling, in order to be considered breach of trust, an official’s conduct must be a “serious and marked departure” from expectations and they must have an intention to use their “public office for a purpose other than the public good,” including a dishonest, corrupt or “partial” purpose.
She wrote in that 2006 case, the court had decided that an officer can make a decision furthering their personal interests “if the decision is made honestly and in the belief that it is a proper exercise of the public power the official enjoys.”
The director wrote that the RCMP officer “identified legitimate concerns” with the file and believed he had a duty to voice them. She wrote that while it was reasonable for officers to conclude he was seeking an exception for his son, he never explicitly asked for the decision to be reversed. Nauss wrote that the officer who drafted the report without permission “made a poor decision” but the report was not falsified or misleading.
“There is no evidence to conclude the (officers) acted for a purpose other than the public good,” Nauss wrote, saying their actions were not dishonest or corrupt. “Some could view his actions as partial, but a review of the evidence indicates that although it may have been poor judgment, the behaviour did not rise to this level.”
SIRT is an independent agency with a civilian director which investigates incidents involving death, serious injury or matters of the public interest.
“While the (officer’s) actions may have been in poor judgment, SIRT conducts criminal investigations and after a thorough review of the case there are no reasonable grounds for a criminal charge,” spokesperson Khalehla Perrault told Brunswick News in an email Thursday. “The report highlights concerning actions but as it is a matter of conduct it is now the responsibility of the RCMP to take any further action.”
In a statement Thursday, RCMP Cpl. Hans Ouellette said the force could not comment on SIRT investigations, which are independent.
He said that one of the officers was placed on administrative duties as of Sept. 18 “as a result of the SIRT investigation,” with the other remaining on active duty. He said that the RCMP professional standards unit is investigating code of conduct allegations in the incident, and that the force “will respond with appropriate actions” pending the outcome.
“RCMP members are expected to hold themselves to a high moral and professional standard,” Ouellette wrote. “We understand and respect the impact it can have on public trust when there is any allegation that a member has not met the standard that our communities deserve.”
Benjamin Perryman, associate professor and acting associate dean at the UNB Faculty of Law, told Brunswick News Thursday that the SIRT ruling was “a very troubling decision.”
He said that it has legal issues as well as broader implications because while the 2006 Supreme Court case is relevant, in that case the official had a “public reason to act” which involved a family member.
He said that while the report details the facts and uses the right legal standard, it doesn’t “explain why any of these facts are in the public interest.”
“Here, the SIRT director doesn’t explain what the public legitimacy is in any of this conduct, and it’s hard to see that there is any,” he said.
At this stage, whether or not the officer was acting in good faith “is probably something that warrants a trial or referral for prosecution,” Perryman said.
“The reasonable grounds standard, it’s there to say, a criminal trial is no joke, we should only be referring things where there is sufficient smoke,” Perryman said. “Here there is a fire.”
Perryman said you shouldn’t judge an institution based on one case, and said that SIRT generally does a “reasonable job in a lot of cases, and I think their decisions are defensible in a lot of cases.”
“I don’t think this decision is defensible at all,” he said, saying it suggests there should be a mechanism to appeal SIRT rulings “that are clearly wrong.”
While an agency can apply to have a decision reviewed in court, he said they are challenging cases because the courts have indicated that they don’t want to “second-guess” SIRT decisions.
Perryman said there are “two groups that lose from this decision,” he said, including JPS officers who reported the incident as well as the public.
“This decision does not instill confidence in police oversight, and specifically the oversight function provided by the Serious Incident Response Team,” he said. “I would say that 99 per cent of people would read these facts and be aghast.”