Window Dressing Complaint Against the Calgary Police Service
The Window Dressing Complaint and Reverse Uno Card
The CPS tried to take a few shots at us in their formal submission to the Calgary Police Commission.
They called our change-room audit a "stunt," said our complaint lacked common sense, and suggested that we should seek legal advice.
So we filed Complaint #11 by playing a reverse Uno card, turning their insults back on them in our formal complaint.
We used their own documents as evidence, including:
- The CPS Public Nudity (Criminal Code s. 174) Guidelines
- A CPS Chief Constable-signed complaint resolution
- A memo from CPS Chief Neufeld
- And the very CPS submission to the Commission containing those unsavory comments
Everything is grounded in the 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐥 filings of the Calgary Police Service.
Our conclusion?
In plain language, the Guidelines appear to be window dressing.
The so-called "stunt" was not a stunt at all. It was a real-world audit that gave the CPS an unusually clear and uncontroversial opportunity to demonstrate how their guidance works in practice.
Had they clearly applied the Guidelines, this complaint would likely have had little or no merit.
Instead, we are left with a simple question:
Did the CPS need legal advice, or did the CPS need legal advice?
We're not entirely sure which one yet.
All they had to do was chill and stop threatening us when we host lawful outdoor activities. Had they done so, ten of these complaints would not exist.
Read the entire 4 page complaint for yourself in the attached photos.
Administrative Law, Not "Please Let Us Be Naked"
The entire point of calling the police to a change room is that the police would never arrest anyone. In fact, the cops refused to investigate the change room at all. In their formal filing they said "any reasonable person" would know it was lawful, which, again, is the entire point.
So in their formal filing they argued:
A) Public nudity is always banned
B) Some instances of public nudity are obviously so lawful that they don't even need to investigate.
We changed the argument from "you should let us be naked" into administrative law that addresses if the police follow their own policies and guidance, as well as the law.
The Calgary Police Commission cannot address whether we should be allowed to be naked or not. They can, however, determine if the police are following their own policies and procedures, which is the ONLY purpose of the oversight.
We moved the debate into a lane that oversight can address, and it isn't addressing nudity directly. We are avoiding the morality debate entirely, and placing this in a lane that oversight can address.
How Our Advocacy Works
Our advocacy works by slowly closing in the walls around them.
We have a letter from the Attorney General of Canada that we don't even reference anymore (among many other documents). At this stage, we are using the CPS's own formal filings against them, turning their own words into evidence that advances our cause.
The CPS can debate the legal interpretation of the Attorney General of Canada all they wish, but the more difficult question now is why they appear to be contradicting their own Chief Constable on the matter.
It took 8 years of preparation to reach this point.
For 8 years, we meticulously mapped the system. Throughout that time, many people in this sub told us that we were doing it wrong and that our incremental achievements were meaningless. We have been accused of not understanding the law more times than we can count.
Over the past 8 years, we have learned that precision matters. Small errors in understanding can lead to flawed conclusions, and flawed conclusions can undermine years of work. That is why we shut down non-factual information, regardless of where it comes from—whether from nudists, critics, or the police.
Those minor achievements were never the goal, the paperwork that those achievements created was the goal. Because without that paperwork, without those achievements, we could not write complaints like the one we are sharing today.
Our record is so extensive that when the CPS suggested that we need legal advice, we were able to cite their own documents as evidence supporting the conclusion that the Calgary Police Service may be the party in need of legal advice. That observation is directed toward a lawyer and former Crown prosecutor.
Because we already have the necessary documentation in hand, when the authorities respond with hot garbage, we can rebut their arguments with supporting records within hours.
Phase 1 was document collection.
We are now in Phase 2: weaponizing the record.
