Michelle Dorey Forestell, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Kingstonist.com

A small city with big city problems provides much work for its police service, some of which goes largely unseen by the public.

John Bougie, Manager of Records and Systems with Kingston Police, gave an overview of his unit to the Kingston Police Service Board at its latest meeting on Thursday, Mar. 20, 2025. His presentation provided a glimpse at the work of a group of largely unseen guardians of public safety, law, and order in the City of Kingston.

He began by saying that while records may seem “boring” to many people, “I find it fascinating. It’s something different every day.”

He described the unit structure as “pretty flat,” consisting of himself as the Records Manager and then five distinct groups working beneath him: Front Desk, Records Counter, Criminal Records, CPIC (Canadian Police Information Centre), and Alarms/FOI (Freedom of Information).

“We have 12 full-timers and 11 part-timers. We have three currently on assignment in other units and two on leave,” Bougie said.

Front desk

The most visible part of the unit are the front desk staff, who are “the main gateway for non-emergency services here,” Bougie said.

“They are client-facing, so for a lot of people, they’re the first point of contact,” he said, noting that the front desk is open 7 a.m. to midnight daily and is staffed by five full-time employees. “Primarily, they handle our non-emergency lines. That’s the main phone number. Occasionally, they do have to flip calls up to our 911 depending on the severity of the call.”

This unit also processes online reports, performs essential control for building access for visitors coming and going, and provides additional services.

“One of the big ones is Commissioners of Oath,” he noted. A Commissioner of Oaths in Ontario has the authority to administer oaths when a person signs an affidavit or statutory declaration. The Province of Ontario grants them this authority through the Commissioners for Taking Affidavits Act.

“Overall, [front desk staff] have to have a broad knowledge of the entire organization,” said Bougie. “They handle a massive variety of requests that come in through the front gate.”

Records counter

Bougie described the records counter as the “main gateway for administrative records.” This client-facing unit is another first point of contact for the public. Open daily from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., it is staffed by three full-time employees whose primary responsibilities include processing 18,000 background checks annually. Additionally, the records counter employees take general requests for records and administrative requests. 

“They also handle our civilian fingerprints, and they do a lot of inter-agency information exchanges, primarily with background checks for other services, verifying information before they release a criminal record check,” Bougie shared.

Criminal records

Bougie explained that the criminal records unit handles the Kingston Police in-house criminal records to ensure an accurate reflection of what has happened in the courts. 

Staffed by a single person from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, this unit handles “all submissions to the RCMP: fingerprints, mugshots, general descriptors, and dispositions, to make sure that information is accurate… And then on the reverse side, they handle the record suspensions and destruction requests… So if you’ve gone into the system, you’ve done your sentence, and then you want that removed from your record, that’s who handles that cleanup.”

CPIC (Canadian Police Information Centre)

“CPIC is the main criminal repository for Canada, and our CPIC operators administer these submissions,” Bougie stated. “For that, we have two [full-time] employees, whose shift is from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Because of when court ends, we have a slightly later end time for them.”

“They maintain all the entries that go on CPIC. Some are more on the administrative side, which would be lost property [or] missing persons, and then the criminal side: pending charges, warrants, that kind of thing.”

Bougie pointed out that this unit also “reconciles whatever activities officers have done during the day and whatever’s happened in the courts, and they support weekend and special holiday court (WASH court)… Anything critical that comes in needs to get on CPIC so that officers are aware. They would handle that in the off hours.”

Alarms and Freedom of Information

Bougie said a single full-time employee is responsible for the Alarms and Freedom of Information programs from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. They handle “routine disclosures, primarily for people coming in for occurrence reports for things like break and enter or stolen property, and a lot of motor vehicle collision report requests.”

“They also do some inter-agency requests,” he continued, noting that sometimes other agencies might “need a more fulsome report of what has occurred here, so [this staff member can] coordinate that exchange.”

Bougie gave the example of requests from the Chief Firearms Office (CFO), which is delegated authority by the Ministry of the Solicitor General and is responsible for key components of the Firearms Act, including licensing individuals and businesses, approving transfers of restricted and prohibited firearms, approving shooting clubs and ranges, issuing Authorizations to Carry and Transport, and designating Firearms Officers and firearms safety course instructors. “They do routine followups on individuals,” he said, and the FOI employee facilitates that exchange of information.

“They also reconcile with alarm monitoring companies to follow up on false alarms or activity that happens when requests come in of that nature,” he noted. Every business which sells, leases, installs, replaces, maintains, services, repairs, or monitors security alarm systems that notify the Kingston Police when activated must register with Kingston Police.

Manager, Records and Systems

Bougie said his own duties are “very much supported by the sub-units. I couldn’t do my job without them.”

“I am the Delegated Authority for Kingston Police under MFIPPA [Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. M.56],  which means I do the formal FOI requests and routine requests from the Privacy Commissioner.”

“I also receive all the court orders and court motions, primarily civil litigation, personal injury, and a lot of family law,” he went on, pointing out that in some situations parents have a very contentious separation, so the child is assigned a lawyer for their own protection. These cases, Bougie said, “can get pretty involved. It generally involves a lot of police reports.” 

“I also provide end-user support for our records management system, so that’s doctors and civilians who enter data, can’t find data, or need to fix something,” he said.

He also provides organizational support for reports and data inquiries: “General extraction of data, just so we have a picture of what we do, how much we do, and where it’s all going.” 

There are also a large number legislative requirements, Bougie said. “[Regarding] the Privacy Commissioner, there are certain reports we have to send up to them every year. Same with Statistics Canada, the Coroner’s office — just a broad range of report requirements we’re obligated to do.” 

Unit pressures 

The main issue pressuring the unit is staffing, said Bougie. “I sound like a broken record here. I rely heavily on my 11 part-time employees… They work full-time hours as part-time or temporary employees.”

This unit, he points out, has a relatively large turnover. Many employees become career employees in the unit, “so when they leave, it’s an expensive turnover in corporate knowledge. We do so many little things that have so many variants. It’s just very hard to document and train. When those longtime employees leave, there’s a huge corporate knowledge that’s just lost.”

“Many young employees come in fresh out of school and use this as a stepping stone to get into law enforcement in various ways. When they leave, it’s expensive to train those people up. We also lose a lot of employees to other units within the building, so it’s not all bad. At least we know these people, and then they continue to be great employees. We’ve also lost one to [the role of] sworn officer. Also good,” Bougie said, but it still means the unit ends up short.

Another pressure point is the ever increasing volume of work. Bougie pointed out that “Kingston has big city problems with small city budgets,” so employees are pushed to work hard and fast. “It’s a lot of volume, and it never ends,” which he acknowledged can be frustrating. “You could clear out your tasks on Friday, and [on] Monday, you’re already buried. So if you’re the kind of person who likes to have a clean plate, it’s not the place for you.” 

Legislative changes are coming that he expects to create more work. For example, broad record checks are a new type of record check, which he said “is very invasive… It’s from the ministry of Child and Community Services…. It looks at everything you’ve ever done, whereas a regular criminal record check is either criminal or not. These are more behavioral checks.”

More oversight, he said, “is not a bad thing; it’s just that it’s extra work for us.”

He also alluded to a report given to the Police Services Board last month that referenced stringent requirements from Crown attorneys for footage obtained via body-worn cameras: “As much as it’ll impact us on the criminal side, on the civil side it will have [equal, possibly more] impact… The amount of work involved in that is going to be substantial.”

Bail reform, too, has created pressure on the unit. “I know it’s odd to see bail reform here for an administrative unit, but catch and release just generates reports, and downstream, we deal with parole and sentencing. So when are people finally brought to justice and are released from incarceration, they are sentenced. Those requests come to us.” 

Bougie ended by saying that all of this really only scratched the surface of what his administrative unit does.

Board member Christian Leuprecht thanked Bougie, saying, “You represent so much of the organization in terms of the people who are quietly in the background — those who aren’t necessarily seen by the public but who provide the integrity and the quality that this police service offers to the community.”

The Kingston Police Services Board meets regularly on the third Thursday of each month, beginning at 12 noon (unless stated otherwise in the agenda) in the William Hackett Boardroom at Kingston Police Headquarters, 705 Division Street.

Learn more about our News Monitoring here.

---