TA的每日心情 | 慵懒 2020-1-3 00:51 |
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签到天数: 71 天 [LV.6]出窍
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警察要能靠得住,就能上树。
There is no binding case across Canada that positively decides that police are under no legal duty to individual members of the public, but that's the trend.
I'm aware of some past rumblings in lower courts that once implied otherwise: e.g. DeHeus v. Niagara Regional Police Services Board and Traversy v. Smith, but those cases didn't have any legs, and the Court of Appeal for Ontario has basically shut down any momentum they generated there.
Right now, Canadian law recognizes a couple of torts committed by police toward suspects and accused persons but not to individual members of the public. I would think that would open the floodgates to litigation. Using the example of Ontario's Police Services Act, police are under such general duties as preserving the peace, preventing crime, assisting victims of crime, and apprehending criminals, but that doesn't seem to translate into a cause of action brought by individuals against police services for the services' failure to take appropriate steps in a call.
Here's where we're at right now: in one case called Hill v. Hamilton-Wentworth Regional Police Services Board, the Supreme Court of Canada specifically left open the question of whether police owe a duty to victims of crime the same way they owe a duty of care to suspects. in another case called Norris v. Gatien, the Court of Appeal for Ontario decided that police defendants did not owe duties of care individually to victims -- investigation of crime was done in the public interest.
So back to that case you cite. One of the police's main errors was the 911 dispatcher erring in the way information was relayed to responding units, resulting in further horrors being committed against some victims. It does not appear that such victims, were they in Canada, could successfully sue the police |
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