Police Review Commission now handling police complaints

Posted on May 7, 2026 by admin

By Cal Braid
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

 Alberta’s new Police Review Commission (PRC) is up and running in 2026 and representatives from the agency recently paid a visit to Taber and other southern Alberta locations. Four months after its implementation, the Commission took its mandate public in an effort to build trust and announce its presence.

 As a previous mentioned story on the topic, the PRC is a body composed of mostly civilians, and assigned to the task of dealing with citizen complaints about police conduct in the province. The PRC aims to eliminate or reduce the instances of police investigating themselves. Last month, PRC reps Jason van Rassel and Bryan Weismiller met with Southern Alberta Newspapers to promote public awareness of the agency.

 In its first four months, the agency received 1,026 submissions, with 47 from southern Alberta. The submission numbers of people contacting the PRC to file a complaint do not represent the final complaint counts after assessment. So far in southern Alberta, the PRC has received 38 submissions related to the Lethbridge Police Service and one submission related to the Taber Police Service.

 Van Rassel said, “That number represents the amount of people who’ve called us up and said, ‘I want to file a complaint’…that does not represent the amount of complaints that have gone through the process of being assessed.”

 Because the PRC is only four months old, van Rassel said it’s too early to extrapolate solid trends or precise counts of the assessed complaints.

 The Taber Police Service welcomes the PRC’s presence and TPS Chief Graham Abela told the Advance, “As the Chief of Police, the roll out of the PRC has been probably a best practice that I have seen in government. The efficacy of whether or not the PRC will bring public confidence and trust in policing provincially is still up in the air.”

 He said British authorities recently cancelled similar agencies after about 10 years of implementation. In late-2025, police and crime commissioners were abolished in England and Wales, and elected local politicians are reportedly now responsible for holding police forces to account. With that said, Alberta’s PRC is optimistic that its formation will help resolve difficulties in the way the public-at-large relates to police.

 “I will trust the process and see what the evidence brings,” Abela said. “As historically, we have very low complaints against police, I don’t see the system impacting us greatly at a local level.”

 The PRC has a broad enough scope to effectively cover many complaints, however it is limited to some degree. To recap the five levels of complaint based on severity or the nature of each allegation: Level 1 encompasses death, serious injury or cases of a sensitive nature; Level 2 deals with criminal wrongdoing by police; Level 3 includes non-criminal misconduct; Level 4 addresses performance matters; and Level 5 deals with police service policies and procedures.

 The Commission can do the following: Investigate Level 1 matters involving all Alberta police services including the RCMP, peace officers, and the Legislative Assembly Security Service; investigate Level 2 criminal wrongdoing matters involving all Alberta police services and the RCMP; investigate non-criminal misconduct complaints involving First Nation and municipal police services; refer Level 4 and 5 complaints back to police services; monitor transparency and accountability; and assist with alternative dispute resolution.

 The Commission cannot: handle complaints about non-Alberta police; intake and handle non-criminal misconduct complaints against RCMP officers; deal with employment related issues; manage complaints about peace officers outside of Level 1; or provide legal advice.

 Visit albertaprc.ca for more information. Filing a complaint is a fairly quick process by following the ‘make a submission’ dropdown menu. However, it is not anonymous and identifiers are a part of the process, making it unsuitable for those with outstanding warrants for their arrest. Compliments are also received through the same portal.

 A submission is not a complaint until it has been processed as such. But then, according to van Rassel, “We’re mandated that from the time that something is classified as a complaint, the clock starts ticking, and we have 180 days to resolve that complaint from the time it’s been classified.”