To Be or Not to be Intelligence-Led:

That is the question for the Ottawa Police Service

Many police forces will tell you that they subscribe to the idea of “intelligence-led” policing, a doctrine that has been gaining ground for decades. In essence this doctrine places an emphasis on pro-active (as opposed to reactive) policing based on the acquisition of intelligence about potential criminal activity and public safety dangers before they become threatening.  It is a form of “pre-crime” activity (hint—“Minority Report”), if you like. There is no accepted definition, but here is the bare bones one offered by the RCMP: “Intelligence-led policing requires reliance on intelligence before decisions are taken, be they tactical or strategic.”

The Ottawa Police Service, according to Interim Chief Steve Bell, who served during the Freedom Convoy events as Deputy Commissioner in charge of intelligence, is a believer in intelligence -led policing. That is what he told the Public Order Emergency Commission in his day-long testimony on October 24.

Saying you are an intelligence -led police force is easy; doing intelligence -led policing is hard. For the Ottawa Police Service, faced with the massive challenges of understanding and responding to the “Freedom Convoy” demonstrations, which came to occupy downtown Ottawa and disrupt the lives of residents for weeks, intelligence -led policing was nowhere in  sight. Ostrich-led policing was closer to the truth.

Why is intelligence-led policing hard?  This is an important question to ask in the course of any analysis of the failures of intelligence demonstrated by the Ottawa Police Service. It is hard because it requires four things:

a)     Good intelligence on potential criminal activity or public safety threats

b)    A willingness on the part of law enforcement decision-makers to trust intelligence

c)     An ability to use intelligence to inform planning and policy making

d)    An understanding of how communities may feel threatened

The last point is particularly important. Intelligence-led policing needs to use what is called a net-assessment approach, designed to deliver analysis of concerns about perpetrator groups and individuals alongside an understanding of community dynamics and community impacts of crime and behaviour that threatens public safety.

While the judgement may seem overly sweeping and harsh, the indications available through testimony and documentation presented to the Public Order Emergency Commission suggests that the Ottawa Police Service failed to meet any of the requirements of intelligence-led policing. It lacked good intelligence, was not prepared to trust the intelligence it did have, was unable to use intelligence to inform decision-making, and paid scant attention to community impacts. Perhaps at the heart of these failures, there are indications that the OPS had very little understanding of the nature of intelligence itself. This is borne out in the very first intelligence assessment drawn up by the Ottawa Police Service “Security Intelligence Section” on the Freedom  Convoy. So remarkable is this intelligence assessment, both for its timing and its contents, that it deserves close scrutiny and will be the subject of this column. You can read it for yourself here:

https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/exhibits/OPS00004039.pdf?t=1666723764

To set the stage, the Ontario Provincial Police had begun writing strategic intelligence assessments (“Project Hendon”—which I discussed in an earlier column) on the over-the-horizon “Freedom Convoy” as early as January 13. The senior police commander in charge of intelligence for the Ottawa police, (Now Interim Chief) Bell did not read any of the OPP’s reporting until 17 days later,  on January 27. This was a mere two days before a massive convoy of trucks and vehicles and thousands of protesters descended on Ottawa’s capital, directed into the downtown core by the Ottawa police itself.

The OPS’s Security Intelligence Section, which reported to Bell, issued its first intelligence assessment on the Freedom Convoy on January 28. Note the date--this was one day (Friday) before the protest truck convoys arrived in Ottawa in force. A big strike one against intelligence-led policing.

It was not just the late date of the first OPS intelligence assessment that was troubling, so too were its contents. It did not meet the standard of a professional intelligence assessment. Its language was imprecise, often emotive and sometimes replete with caricatures; there were unwanted elements of politicised and subjective judgements; right wing media commentary was preferenced; there was no mention of the OPP Hendon reports or reporting on the Freedom Convoy from any other intelligence entity.  The Ottawa police security intelligence section appeared to be operating, or want to operate, in splendid isolation—never a good idea when faced with a complex intelligence problem and certainly not when you have limited resources.

Examples of imprecise language are usages such as “vast number of vehicles;” “huge volume of vehicles and large transport trucks”; “expect very large crowds;” references to a “middle class” protest; “widespread community [supportive] action;””Law enforcement is being met with numbers of people beyond the norm;” “significant number of supporters on overpasses throughout the province;” “the general public is buying into this event in a big way.” Not only is the imprecise language unhelpful in what is meant to be an intelligence assessment, some of this, especially about general public support/widespread community support is just hog-wash, unsupported by any cited evidence. The OPS appeared unable to take the temperature of its own city.

Intelligence assessments need to assess, that is come up with judgements that will assist decision-makers.  The January 28 assessment fails this basic test at many points. It begins with a statement about the goals of the Freedom Convoy which included that the federal government cease all vaccine mandates, end vaccine passports, remove all COVID regulations at the border and lift the vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers (the U.S. government had a similar mandate in place, so removing the Canadian regulations would have no impact).  In effect, the convoy wanted to erase current public health measures that had been put in place to deal with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. This depiction of the initial goals of the Freedom Convoy, before the protest metastasized into something more diffuse and anti-government in nature, was reasonably accurate. What the intelligence assessment failed to do was draw any conclusions about what these goals meant in terms of the operations of the Freedom Convoy as it descended on Ottawa and especially what they meant for the longevity of the Freedom Convoy’s stay in Ottawa and likely impacts on Ottawa residents and businesses. At a later point in the January 28 report it states “convoy members appear to be stocking up on food and supplies which could indicate that they have long terms plans to stay in Ottawa.” “Could” is simply not good enough. No deduction whatsoever was drawn about the Convoy’s remarkable war chest, drawn from its GoFundMe page (estimated at the time at $6.5 million).

The assessment, alarmingly, came close to celebrating the Freedom Convoy as a true “grass-roots” movement, described as being in notable contrast to what the analyst described as the phenomenon of repetitive protest with the same players, chants, tactics.  Here is the assessment’s caricature of such protests: “Block a city intersection close to downtown media outlets. Have two or three glue themselves to something, waiting for the same old supper-hour news shows and write-ups in hard-left handbills, blogs and undernourished Twitter feeds.”  How refreshing to have a real protest rather than the same-old, same-old. But really, this is truly embarrassing for what was meant to pass as an intelligence assessment. Worse still, the writer seemed to salute the yellow-vest protests in France as a “real protest…” Right wing commentators from the media were quoted. If there were extremists among the Freedom Convoy or on its fringes they were just “trolling” legitimate protesters and getting a “sick thrill.”

Politicisation of the assessment was a troubling feature.  The assessment noted that the government was failing to properly acknowledge the convoy. In fact it went so far as to state, in bold, “the federal government is strenuously ignoring the event.” The writer than goes on to offer the Trudeau government a supposed history lesson. Read this PM: “Historically, refusal of a leader to meet or address the reality of a popular uprising has, historically, led to situations becoming unmanageable.”  There is no place in an intelligence assessment for taking a political side or offering policy advice. Professional intelligence assessments must avoid such cardinal sins to have any credibility as truth-tellers.

The terrible quality of the January 28 intelligence assessment is a big strike two.  (Incidentally it was version four, so what earlier versions read like can only be imagined).  If there is where the Ottawa Police Service’s intelligence effort began, it was not an auspicious start for a process that would end up quickly overwhelming the Ottawa Police.

The rest of the story involves failures to use intelligence for planning to respond to the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa and the absence of reflection on community impacts. Sadly, testimony before the Commission bears out the stunning nature of both failures.