The media treats a public inquest as a sacred ritual of accountability. When a man dies following an encounter with police officers, the headline machinery kicks into gear, promising that a jury, a courtroom, and a stream of expert testimony will finally deliver the truth to a grieving family and a skeptical public.
It is a comfortable narrative. It is also a delusion.
The standard coverage surrounding the public inquest into the death of a Prince Albert man—who died following an interaction with local police—follows a predictable blueprint. Journalists frame the proceeding as a truth-seeking crusade. They focus on procedural milestones, quote official statements from oversight bodies, and quietly imply that this formal legal exercise will fix a broken system.
They are selling a fantasy. Public inquests are not designed to find fault, enforce legal consequences, or fix systemic law enforcement failures. By design, they are backward-looking administrative theatre built to give the illusion of closure while protecting the institutional status quo.
If you want real institutional reform, you have to stop pretending that an inquest is an engine of justice.
The Core Lie: Fact-Finding Without Accountability
The most glaring flaw in how we cover and process police-involved deaths is the fundamental misunderstanding of what a coroner’s inquest actually does.
Ask the average person what an inquest is for, and they will tell you it exists to determine if police acted improperly. They are dead wrong.
In Canada, as in most common-law jurisdictions, a coroner’s inquest is explicitly non-adversarial. It has a strictly limited mandate: establish who died, where they died, when they died, and the medical cause and manner of death.
- What it can do: Recommend that a police department update its policy on physical restraints or conduct additional training on de-escalation.
- What it cannot do: Assign legal blame, find criminal liability, or compel a single officer or department to implement a single recommendation.
Think about that disconnect. A family attends a public hearing hoping for accountability. The public tunes in expecting a verdict on whether police force was justified or excessive. Instead, after days or weeks of testimony, a jury hands down a list of polite, legally non-binding recommendations that sit on a government shelf gathering dust.
We are using a mechanism designed for industrial accidents and medical misadventures to address complex, high-stakes human rights and law enforcement crises. It is the wrong tool for the job.
Why "Best Practices" Recommendations Change Nothing
I have watched public institutions burn millions of dollars navigating the aftermath of high-profile tragedies. The institutional playbook never changes: absorb the initial shock, express sympathy, wait for the formal inquiry, accept the non-binding recommendations with solemn gratitude, and carry on as usual.
The competitor articles love to highlight the potential for "systemic change" coming out of these proceedings. They point to past inquests that generated dozens of recommendations regarding officer safety, mental health response, and communication protocols.
Here is the truth nobody in government wants to admit: recommendations without enforcement mechanisms are purely cosmetic.
When an inquest jury recommends that a police service increase crisis-intervention training, there is no judicial oversight following up a year later to check if it happened. There are no financial penalties if the service ignores the advice. There are no career consequences for leadership if the exact same scenario plays out two years down the road with a different officer and a different victim.
It creates a endless loop:
- A tragic death occurs during a police response.
- An oversight body investigates for a year or two.
- An inquest is held to "find the facts."
- A jury issues generic, non-binding recommendations.
- The recommendations are filed away.
- A similar event occurs, starting the cycle anew.
This isn't a bug in the system; it is a feature. The public inquest acts as a safety valve. It releases public pressure by creating the appearance of action while insulating decision-makers from actual, binding liability.
The Flawed Premise Behind "Better Training"
Whenever an inquest unpacks a fatal use-of-force incident, the conversation inevitably drifts toward training. "Officers needed better de-escalation skills." "The force needed better crisis intervention protocols."
This framing completely misses the point. It assumes that tragic outcomes are simply the result of an information deficit—that if you just throw a three-day seminar at an officer, high-stress, split-second encounters will magically resolve peacefully.
Let us run a thought experiment.
Imagine a scenario where a police officer responds to a chaotic, high-stress call involving an agitated individual in acute distress. The officer has completed 40 hours of classroom instruction on mental health awareness over a five-year career. But in the moment, surrounded by noise, uncertain threats, and surging adrenaline, the officer's nervous system takes over. The brain defaults not to page 47 of a policy manual, but to immediate physical control tactics.
The issue isn't that the officer forgot their training; the issue is that we rely on armed police officers to act as primary responders for societal failures they are fundamentally unequipped to solve.
Training cannot bridge the gap between a bad operational model and a complex human crisis. Expecting an inquest's recommendation for "enhanced training modules" to prevent future deaths is like putting a band-aid on a structural collapse.
What Actual Accountability Looks Like
If we want to stop repeating this tragic script, we have to dismantle the myth of the public inquest as a tool for justice and radically alter how police force incidents are adjudicated and audited.
1. Mandatory Binding Compliance
If an inquest jury issues recommendations to a public body, those recommendations should carry statutory weight. A designated independent ombudsman must audit compliance annually. If a police service fails to implement or adequately address a recommendation within 18 months without showing cause, their operational budget should be reduced accordingly. Put real financial skin in the game.
2. Immediate, Unfiltered Data Disclosure
Inquests often take place two, three, or four years after the actual event. By the time witnesses testify, memories have faded, officers have moved departments, and public interest has eroded. Transparency delayed is transparency denied. Audio, video, and initial investigative findings should be released under strict, standardized timelines—weeks, not years, after an incident.
3. Separate the Fact-Finding from the Systemic Reform
Stop asking a randomly selected jury of five civilians to solve deep-seated police operational flaws after listening to two weeks of confusing legal jargon. Use inquests strictly to establish facts for civil and public record, but trigger automatic, independent operational audits of any unit involved in a fatal encounter.
The media will continue to report on the Prince Albert inquest with solemn reverence, treating every witness statement as a step toward resolution. They will print the jury's eventual recommendations with breathless optimism, framing them as a roadmap for progress.
Do not buy it.
Until we stop treating non-binding legal theatre as a substitute for enforceable accountability, public inquests will remain what they have always been: a costly, slow-motion distraction that gives the public the sensation of progress while leaving the underlying mechanics of power entirely untouched.
