Audit of Investigator's Notes

On this page

• Context
• Audit Objective
• Audit Finding Themes
• Key Takeaways

Context

Regular Members (RMs) take notes throughout the course of investigations. These notes serve to refresh memory, justify decisions made and record evidence. Well documented notebook entries lend credibility to testimony and can substantiate information years after the occurrence. Inadequate and inaccurate entries in a notebook can compromise an investigation and/or subsequent prosecution.

Notes are subject to disclosure and examination by the courts in criminal, civil and administrative proceedings and may be accessed under the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act. Upon departure from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), an RM's notebooks are retained by the organization.

Audit Objective

The objective of this audit engagement is to provide assurance that the processes and practices used to maintain investigator's notes were adequate to ensure compliance with relevant policies to support investigations, corroborate evidence, and maintain the credibility of a RMs' testimony in court. The audit also assessed the implementation of the recommendations from the 2014 Audit of Investigator's Notes to determine if the issues raised in the former audit were satisfactorily addressed over the long term.

This audit was national in scope and covered the period between April 1, 2021 and September 30, 2023, and also included a forward-looking component.

Audit Finding Themes

The audit findings can be grouped into three themes:

1. Recording key investigative information in notes;
2. Capturing, tracking and storing investigators' notes in formats that support operations; and,
3. Retaining investigators' notes and notebooks by the RCMP.

Key Takeaways

Overall, the audit found that processes and practices in place to maintain investigator's notes are generally adequate to ensure compliance with relevant policies, support investigations, corroborate evidence and maintain credibility of a RM's testimony in court. However, it was noted that the issues identified from the 2014 audit persist and opportunities remain to improve information management practices relating to investigator's notes (physical and electronic).

RMs take a large amount of notes to support investigations, including written notes and electronic reports. Policy and training is in place to provide guidance on when notes should be taken and what they should contain. While audit testing found that note taking was generally compliant with policy, gaps exist with supervisory review as well as outdated tools that support note taking and review. This increases the risk that deficiencies in note taking will not be detected and addressed on a timely basis.

RMs have a variety of tools available to capture information relevant to an investigation including notebooks, electronic reports, digital recorders, and mobile phones among others. While these tools support relevant information being captured in a form that supports investigations, opportunities to modernize and enhance the efficiency of capturing this information were identified.

Significant deficiencies were noted with respect to the organization's retention of [REDACTED] RM notebooks. The are opportunities to increase guidance around the process of retaining notes and notebooks, as well as how and where they are stored to increase their utility to the organization and mitigate the risk of loss or unintentional destruction.