Foot dragging by the Mounties involving the in-custody death of a British Columbia man is the latest issue to raise the ire of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP.
The commission has insisted on tougher legislation to force the Mounties to respond more quickly to its investigations.
The demand came Tuesday morning as the commission released its final report into the July 2003 death of Prince George resident Clay Alvin Willey.
Commission spokeswoman Laura Colella said the RCMP took 14 months to respond to an interim report examining the death of the aboriginal man.
"Our concern is it makes the public complaints system useless, people can't trust the public complaints system if it is going to take this long to respond to our reports," she said.
"We need to send this message today. We are not satisfied with these delays and we are hoping these delays can be fixed. The commission is waiting for new legislation so we are hoping that this will be addressed in our new legislation."
A coroner's inquest ruled Willey's death was accidental, caused by a cocaine overdose.
Video from the RCMP detachment showed Willey, hog-tied, being dragged face down to a jail cell and jolted simultaneously by two police Tasers.
While the Commission found Willey was not treated with respect or decency after his arrest, the repeated Taser use was not a primary focus of the final report.
"We continue to monitor the Taser situation and we continue to monitor if the RCMP is following their own procedures put in place in respect to Tasers," Colella said.
"But if you are going to report on the Taser use against Willey, it becomes a non story because it happened nine years ago and the policies have changed so much," she said.
"How the RCMP uses Tasers today is entirely different than how they used them nine years ago."
Senior Mounties in Prince George have scheduled a news conference for later Tuesday to respond to the Commissions' report.
