Kingston Police Services Board hears challenges facing Court Services Unit

A court system bursting at the seams does a disservice to the community, especially to victims --- especially when cases are dismissed because police can’t meet the demand.

This stark message was delivered by Kingston Police to the Kingston Police Services Board (KPSB) at its meeting on Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025. As part of that meeting, the board received a presentation from Staff Sergeant Geoff Dempster, who spoke about the Court Services Unit and the challenges Kingston Police and all services across Ontario are having meeting the demands of a court system that the provincial government has seemingly neglected.

Dempster’s overview of the Court Services Unit included a breakdown of the function of the 26 sworn and civilian members' roles within the unit, with notable highlights on the duties of Special Constables and changes to the amount of disclosure Kingston Police must provide the courts.

Dempster explained a 26-member Court Services Unit flow chart: "There are three full-time supervisors,” he explained. As the unit manager, Dempster has an administrative sergeant, a logistics sergeant, and a part-time “video disclosure sergeant who's taking care of the digital disclosure of evidence to the Crown’s office.“

“We have three full-time clerical positions, one part-time clerical position, four sworn police constables that perform core security, 10 full-time special constables, and five part-time special constables.”

Court administration

The administrative portion of the unit is responsible for the daily vetting of provincial offences and Criminal Code briefs submitted by police to the court office. Once a brief is approved by the staff sergeant, staff process the charges: “They create core information and use it to make requests or warrant summonses, and then they submit those files electronically through the justice of the peace. Once the justice of the peace approves our paperwork, it gets added to the court docket,” Dempster explained. 

One document processor prepares subpoenas and summonses at the Crown's request. She also makes court notifications to Kingston Police members and tracks the files through the courts. She also processes Provincial Offences Act defence notices and keeps track of warrants. 

The administrative branch uses 11 different software programs, Dempster explained, “some that are internal, some that are external, some that interact with the courts and the Crowns to manage the caseload."

Dempster made a brief overview of the disclosure rules that police must abide by, to highlight just how much information the administration branch is responsible for collecting, cataloguing, and disseminating to the Crown.

In 1991, the Supreme Court of Canada’s Stinchcombe ruling (R. v. Stinchcombe) established that the Crown must disclose to the defence all relevant, non-privileged information in possession or control of the prosecuting Crown. The rule applies regardless of whether the evidence is inculpatory (suggesting guilt) or exculpatory (suggesting innocence).

Dempster said that from 1991 to 2016, “the two charge processors could manage everything.”

However, the 2016 Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Jordan --- also known as "Jordan's Law" --- established new rules for how long a criminal trial can take. This decision put extra pressure on the courts and the police by setting timelines for disclosure information to be vetted and provided to the Crown and defence before setting trial dates.

“So if it was a Provincial Court brief, the defence and Crown had to set a trial within 18 months of the charge being filed,” Dempster said, “and if it's a Superior Court brief, they've got 30 months.”

In 2016, there was a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of the Attorney General and the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police on who would take care of the disclosure. “That flowed along quite well,” Dempster said.

“And then in 2024,” he went on, “ the Ministry of the Attorney General came out with the protocol for timely disclosure in criminal cases.” Dempster emphasized that this was not a memorandum of understanding; in his words, “It is a ‘Thou shall.’”

Dempster described it as “a laundry list of disclosure items that the Crown wants presented up front” to meet the 18-month and 30-month timelines.

This increased the volume of information processing to such a degree that, Dempster said, “I don't know of any police service in Ontario that can handle it. It's just a massive amount of material” required before a case can proceed. 

“And it doesn't matter if it's a shoplifting case or if it's an aggravated assault; they want the same material, if we have it,” he noted.

“It's not practical. We do the best we can every day to satisfy the Crown and the defence bar with the amount of disclosure available to us,” Dempster continued. 

“There are often times where we have to go back to the officer investigating the charge and ask them to dig up more.” 

He explained that officers have to work backward to rule out any requested information to ensure it doesn't exist, rather than simply presenting the Crown with the information they have.

Dempster noted in particular that this meant police services were shying away from the use of body-worn cameras because of the sheer number of hours of digital disclosure that needs to be processed as a result of the Crown’s demands. 

“The digital disclosure company we use recommend one full-time disclosure clerk for every 10 body cameras,” he said.

“I think the OPP [Ontario Provincial Police] is managing that, but I don't know of any other police service in Ontario that's able to keep up with it.”

Logistics of transporting prisoners

The other side of the Court Services Unit is the logistics branch, Dempster said, which consists of sworn police constables and special constables performing transports.

He showed a picture of one of the two large prisoner transport vehicles, which can hold up to 12 prisoners, noting that “we recently added two smaller sprinter-style prisoner vans.” These transports go between the courts and Quinte Detention Centre seven days a week, and the number of prisoners being transported back and forth varies daily.

Thursdays, Dempster noted, are often the heaviest transportation day because there is a court set for guilty pleas at 279 Wellington Street. 

“Today we brought 12 prisoners up from Quinte Detention Centre; a lot of them will feed into that guilty [plea] court. But then there may be other days when we bring only two [prisoners],” he said at the meeting, which was also held on a Thursday.

The smaller sprinter-style vans are used more in the city transports, he explained, “when we have to take prisoners from police headquarters to the Ontario Court of Justice and sometimes to Providence Continuing Care for a mental health assessment order.”

The only young offender facility in this area, Dempster said, is in Amherstview. 

“It's a closed-custody facility for females. So when a male youth is remanded over for a closed custody, we're going to Trenton, Ajax, Brampton, or Ottawa [with that youth]. And if it's a female, we’ll go to open custody in Brampton as well,” he said, explaining that the closure of many more local facilities has spread them out. 

“This puts a lot more weight onto our resources personnel and the fleet.”

Courthouse security

There are four court locations within the city of Kingston that Kingston Police are responsible for providing with security in one form or another: the Ontario Court of Justice, the Superior Court of Justice, Family Court, and Provincial Offences court. 

Dempster remarked, “I've noticed a noticeable uptick in criminal matters reaching trial [in Superior Court at the Frontenac County Courthouse] this year." This week, for example, he noted “four different matters going on over there, and this is a short week [because of the Family Day holiday].”

“When I came into the court office a couple of years ago,” he noted, “you might go an entire week with nothing but just civil matters, but I'm seeing an increase in criminal matters making their way to court.”

He pointed out that if a person is in custody for a matter at the Superior Court, police must provide a two-person escort team for the transport, on top of a sworn officer who is there already at the courthouse for court security.

Kingston Police also provide a security officer to the family court at 469 Montreal Street. He said, “There's not a lot of traffic in and out of there… The biggest risk is the heightened emotions that participants might experience in that court. They deal with family matters, child matters.”

“Our provincial offences court at 362 Montreal Street sits full Mondays and Tuesdays and for half the day Fridays,” Dempster continued. “We're providing them enough business that they could sit more days, and they'll probably go four or five days a week, but my understanding is there are not enough Justices of the Peace in this region to be able to fill the courtroom.”

The provincial offences court is shared between Kingston Police, the OPP, and the Ministry of Transportation. 

“This year, working with the prosecutors over there, we were able to secure it one day a week just for Kingston Police… We produce enough material for them to give us our own day,” Dempster said.

When the court is sitting, there is a designated Provincial Offences Act officer at that courthouse to manage all of Kingston Police's provincial offence files.

“And then the flagship,” Dempster continued, “279 Wellington Street, the Ontario Court of Justice, the only place in town where criminals are compelled to gather under one roof. Three courtrooms are running five days a week... There's a cell block in the basement of the courthouse there for prisoners.”

Kingston Police have an office at the 279 Wellington Street building for one of the sergeants, either Dempster or Sgt. Tim Closs, to always be there. They have six full-time special constables who deal with prisoner security and movement. 

“And you have a designated special constable to track our bail briefs and assist the bail Crowns,” said Dempster. 

“Lastly, our main office is here at headquarters… Within our office are a couple more special constables, one who specializes in taking DNA and fingerprints.” 

When the court orders DNA samples to be taken from a prisoner, Dempster said, this officer is the go-to for that: “He also is a document server, so when he isn’t serving that function, he'll go out on the road serving subpoenas and court summonses.”

Headquarters also has a cell block with a video room, which Dempster explained “stems from COVID.” The Court Services Unit is able to present prisoners virtually to any of the courthouses from there, he said, “which is extremely helpful when that prisoner is too much of a risk to transport or unfit or unable to transport. 279 Wellington Street is not necessarily friendly to persons with handicaps or mobility issues, and we've had a couple of times where our facility is much better suited to present them if, for example, they're in a wheelchair.”

Board member Gail MacAllister asked why, given the risk and transport cost, electronic methods are not used more regularly or routinely.

Dempster explained that the judiciary prefers in-person appearances, especially when it comes to guilty pleas. 

“They want to make sure the accused person is there and that they fully understand what they are pleading to,” he said.

Board member and Kingston Mayor Bryan Paterson remarked that with the increasing difficulty Kingston Police and police around the province have keeping up with demand, “It seems like in one of many great examples of the province posing more regulations than they are providing corresponding funding and resources [for,] to meet the demands of their own requirements.”

“Is there any communication amongst other forces [about] where this will go?” Paterson asked. "Is everyone going to fail, and the province is going to have to react to it?"

Chief of Police Scott Fraser responded, saying that there is a great deal of communication from the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police. 

“All the chiefs are screaming about this. All the court managers are screaming about this. But nobody's really listening [at the provincial level]," said the chief.

“Once again, it's unrealistic. If we had 20 more people in there, we still wouldn't be able to meet the demand. And now you're starting to see, as [Dempster] alluded to, agencies with body-worn cameras are getting away from [using] them because for every minute of video time... you have to produce that minute to the court and the Crown. So if someone's here for 21 hours, we have to give the Crown 21 hours of video, even if it's from seven different cameras."

The chief then praised Dempster's work. 

"Geoff does a tremendous job for us, and we're very lucky, and he's got a great relationship with the Crown. But it is a huge challenge that's only getting worse. And unfortunately, it's the victims who generally pay the price because oftentimes cases are dismissed or withdrawn, and that's how they remedy not being able to meet the demand,” said Fraser.

Like Dempster, the chief also alluded to shortages of justices of the peace and judges. 

"They, too, are doing the best they can, but at the end of the day, we can't run a court if there's no justice of the peace. And so we've seen that affect our community, [with courts] even asking that we reduce the number of provincial offences notices we lay because they don't have enough court time for it,” said Fraser.

“We don't see an end in sight, except adding more money, adding more bodies," the chief concluded. "It's like coming to work every day and looking into an empty hole that never gets filled. So it's tough, but we will continue to advocate.”

The Kingston Police Services Board meets regularly on the third Thursday of each month, beginning at 12 noon in the William Hackett Boardroom at Kingston Police Headquarters, 705 Division Street.