Roles and Responsibilities
What does the Board do?
The Hamilton Police Service Board is the civilian body
governing the Hamilton Police Service. The board is responsible for ensuring the delivery of adequate and effective policing in Hamilton and to provide accountability to the public through governance activities that contribute to locally responsive policing.
The primary role of the board is to establish, after
consultation with the Chief of Police, overall
objectives and priorities to ensure requirements found in the Community Safety and Policing Act are met or exceeded.
This is achieved through the enactment of policies.
The Board cannot direct the Chief with respect to
specific day to day or operational decisions of the Service.
The Chief of Police is responsible for administering
the Police Service and overseeing its operation in
accordance with the objectives, priorities and policies
established by the board.
Legislated Responsibilities
The Community Safety and Policing Act outlines the following responsibilities of the board:
A police service board shall:
(a) ensure adequate and effective policing is provided in the area for which it has policing responsibility
(b) employ members of the police service;
(c) appoint members of the police service as police officers;
(d) recruit and appoint the chief of police and any deputy chief of police and determine their remuneration and working conditions, taking their submissions into account;
(e) prepare and adopt a diversity plan to ensure that the members of the police service reflect the diversity of the area for which the board has policing responsibility;
(f) monitor the chief of police’s performance;
(g) conduct a review of the chief of police’s performance at least annually in accordance with the regulations made by the Minister, if any;
(h) monitor the chief of police’s decisions regarding the restrictions on secondary activities set out in section 89 and review the reports from the chief of police on those decisions;
(i) monitor the chief of police’s handling of discipline within the police service;
(j) ensure that any police facilities, including police lock-ups, used by the board comply with the prescribed standards, if any; and
(k) perform such other duties as are assigned to it by or under this or any other Act, including any prescribed duties.