I still don’t understand how Toronto PD have jurisdiction in a totally different town in another county. Does Canada not have jurisdiction similar to the US? This is like LAPD kicking the door in and shooting someone in Palm Springs. Umm…isn’t this a Provincial level matter?
In Canada policing is a shared responsibility between the federal and provincial governments, each with their own areas of jurisdiction. In some provinces (such as Alberta), the federal police - the RCMP - also have provincial jurisdiction because the provinces have given it to them. Other provinces, like Ontario, have their own provincial police (the OPP in Ontario). There are also ‘private’ police forces which are historical artifacts - for example, the major railroads in Canada have their own police, with federal jurisdiction.
Within a province, Canada really doesn’t have such things as counties in the sense that the US does, nor does it have county sheriffs. All province have municipalities, which tend to have their own police, and minicpal districts (typical where there isn’t a big city), which may or may not have police of their own.
In Ontario, where this incident occurred, the Province uses the OPP to police areas not big enough to justify their own police force. But ‘sworn members’ of the OPP and the Toronto police are all ‘peace officers’ created by provincial law with similar
jurisdiction, and can easily have concurrent
responsibility In respect of particular matters. As a matter of practice (and to avoid problems) police forces tend not to go outside of their areas of operations, but there really isn’t the same concept of jurisdiction that you are referring to. In other words, a cop in Ontario is a cop in Ontario for all provincial purposes, regardless of where they reside or work. You can’t get away from the authority of a Toronto police officer by stepping outside of the City of Toronto. You can - to an extent - by stepping outside of the province, but that’s not relevant here.
In this case, for the Toronto police to involve themselves (they generally have more than enough to to do in Toronto), there had to be a Toronto angle which they were pursuing. If it was primarily a Toronto matter, they could even of had the lead.
Just another unknown in this story. And another reason to wait for the facts to come out.
I should add that I don’t live in Ontario, so can’t swear that this is 100% accurate, but I did take criminal law in law school in Ontario (it was required and it was a long time ago!). Any Ontario lawyers on the forum more than welcome to correct me!
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