On June 12, we published this article, revealing for the first time a nearly two-year struggle to get journalist Jon Thompson added to the (local) media list of the Thunder Bay Police Service. 

For a changing roster of made up reasons, and definitely not in retaliation for prior award-winning reporting that had embarrassed the department, the police force would not send Jon official communications he needs to do his job. 

We engaged, repeatedly, with police officials up to and including chief Darcy Fleury, over the course of almost two years to try to resolve the issue diplomatically. Access would be restored, then taken away again. One staffer would be replaced by another, and the cycle would repeat. 

On June 13, at the Canadian Association of Journalists awards gala, I explained to a roomful of journalists that the Thunder Bay Police Service’s arbitrary ban on Jon had now extended to Indigenous journalists at two other outlets, leaving all the local journalists whose beat is to cover Indigenous stories sidelined as the city faced a staggering crisis. Five bodies were discovered in a matter of weeks, as local Indigenous leaders traded barbs with Chief Fleury over his department’s conduct of the search for missing people. 

That week, we followed up with police service board chair Karen Machado, and the crisis PR firm hired to help the board manage a veritable firehouse of scandal surrounding the police force in recent years. Machado, of course, took over the position after one of her predecessors was improperly investigated by the police service, leading to criminal charges against the former chief and a police lawyer. 

We made clear to Machado that the only acceptable resolution for us involved the police service agreeing to provide all official communications to all journalists — not just Jon. The policy had to change. 

On June 19, in response to a media request from another outlet, Chief Fleury doubled down. 

His most recent excuse was that Jon, who is funded through the federal government’s Local Journalism Initiative, and earlier this month won a Digital Publishing Award for local reporting, is not a local journalist.

In his statement, he repeated the argument that they were justified in excluding journalists from official communications on the basis of the scale of their outlet. 

He wanted it known that he was prepared to die on this hill. And so he did. 

Police reverse course on media policy

On June 21 at 9 a.m., chair Machado brought a hastily rescheduled meeting of the police service board to order. Jon was present, as he usually is. On this occasion I was watching the meeting via Zoom. 

Over an hour and a half they moved through an agenda that was largely unremarkable.

At around 10:30 a.m., the meeting went into closed session, and members of the public were kicked out. Two hours later, at 12:30 p.m., the closed session was still ongoing.

A few hours later, I got an email from Machado informing me that the board had met and discussed the matter, and that Chief Fleury would be reaching out to me shortly. The chief was cc’d. 

The next day, June 23, I got an email from Fleury, copied to Machado and two subordinates. 

He said he’d done a review of policies at peer agencies, and found “several methods and media lists being used… including the system used by TBPS.” 

That may be true, I have just never encountered any entity using the scope of an outlet to exclude journalists from official communications at any point in my 14 years of professional experience. According to our lawyer, it is also a violation of the service’s positive duty under the Charter. But it is possible that some police force, somewhere, is also using this dubious distinction to exclude a journalist. Anything is possible. 

The chief continued, “I have decided to proceed in the direction of having our releases delivered to all agencies, be they local or national.”

And just like that, 10 days after we went public, the dispute was resolved. 

An email from Director of Corporate Communications Tracie Smith soon went out to other outlets, informing them of an “update” to their “media notification policies.” 

We’re glad Chief Fleury has seen fit to change his mind, and his policies. But we will be vigilantly watching, lest the force fall back into old habits. 

It is important to note this is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what I would describe as a pattern of bullying and petty harassment directed at Jon by members of the police service. This treatment appears to be retaliation for past reporting that led to criminal charges against several police officers, including the last chief. One of those officers was sentenced to three years in prison last month for what a judge called “militantly illegal police conduct.”

We hope the police service will take this as an opportunity to reevaluate that pattern of behaviour as well. 

Jon, and other journalists, have a job to do. Just like police officers. They also have rights, and we will respond swiftly and publicly to future violations of those rights. 

We never wanted a conflict, and we gave the department every opportunity to head one off. Now that that conflict has been resolved, we’ll be moving forward with a blankish slate, and we encourage the police service to do the same. 

We’ve all got jobs to do, let’s put the focus back where it belongs, and get those jobs done.