Privacy legislation update won’t change Regina police policy

Despite an amendment to privacy legislation in Saskatchewan, the Regina Police Service’s policy on naming murder victims won’t change.

Recently, the provincial government made a change to clarify that police in the province are allowed to release the names of murder victims.

“It’s in the public interest to have people know that a homicide has taken place and to know who the victim is,” said Justice Minister Don Morgan.

However, the clarification won’t have the Regina Police Service revamp its policy.

“It’s likely going to be that you’re going to see very little change when we have those situations arise,” Regina police chief Evan Bray said.

He said the clarification is welcome — it explains the government’s intention with the legislation — but, through conversations with the Justice Minister, he already knew the intent.

“It helps us in terms of guiding us in the decision-making and knowing that their intent all along was not to change the current practice,” he said.

In 2018, Saskatchewan police services came under privacy and information laws, so the Regina Police Service updated its policies. One change which brought a lot of scrutiny was setting out that the Regina police would hold back a murder victim’s name if the police felt it necessary for the investigation or if the family requested it.

Last spring police put that policy into practice and chose not to release the name of a murder victim, which brought a lot of criticism.

At the time, Bray said the policy would be applied in a case-by-case basis. Now, he doesn’t expect this amendment will change things.

“We’ve said we didn’t expect a big departure from what our practice had been before and that still doesn’t change.”

With files from the Canadian Press