No Peel Regional Police officer will be disciplined for “tampering” with evidence after a fellow cop shot and killed Jermaine Carby in 2014, the Star has learned.

The force has also made no policy or procedural changes to ensure no other officer interferes with a probe by Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU), the police watchdog called in to investigate whenever a citizen is killed by a police officer.

The reasons no cop will face consequences for actions the SIU director said “denied” the public of an independent investigation are spelled out in a secret internal police review prepared by Chief Jennifer Evans and brought to a closed-door meeting of the Peel Region Police Services Board last week.

The seven-member civilian board, which includes the mayors of Brampton and Mississauga, has no immediate plans to make the review public. Peel police, meanwhile, say they cannot release the report because it has gone to the board.

“I can advise that there was no disciplinary action taken or recommended and the reasons are provided in the contents of the review,” police spokesman Staff Sgt. Dan Richardson said in an email. “The decision to release or provide further information contained in the administrative review rests with the Peel Police Services Board.”

Richardson also confirmed that no policy or procedural changes were recommended as a result of the internal review.

In July, SIU director Tony Loparco ruled that no charges would be laid against an unnamed Peel police officer who shot and killed 33-year-old Carby during a September 2014 traffic stop in Brampton. Loparco ruled that the officer’s use of lethal force was justified because Carby was approaching him with a knife.

But in a rare move, Loparco called out a Peel officer, also unnamed, for the “highly regrettable” and “ill-advised” decision to remove from the scene the knife officers said Carby was carrying. The knife was handed to SIU investigators in a paper bag several hours later by an acting Peel sergeant, who said an officer responding to the shooting had taken it from the scene.

“As a result of the officer’s actions, the SIU, and in a broader sense the public, is asked to accept that the knife it retrieved from police was in Mr. Carby’s possession when he was shot, when that same inference could have more readily and safely been made had the scene not been tampered with,” Loparco said.

Following the damning report, Peel police launched an internal report, called an administrative review, into the actions of all officers involved. The review is a step polices force must take after an SIU investigation involving its officers.

Legally, police boards “may” make administrative reviews public under the province’s Police Services Act, but the Peel board generally considers the content of administrative reviews confidential.

The office of Community Safety and Correctional Services Minister Yasir Naqvi, who is overseeing a review of the act, referred the Star to the Peel board for comment.

Board chair Laurie Williamson said in an email that “any decision to release, either parts or a condensed version, would only be made in the future following further consultation with the board.”

The public deserves to understand why an officer would not be disciplined for removing key evidence — “action which under any circumstances another person would be charged with obstructing police or contaminating a crime scene,” said Darryl Davies, a criminology instructor at Carleton University.

“There’s no such thing as accountability when things are done surreptitiously, when they are done in a clandestine way and you don’t know what happened,” he said.

The decision to keep the report secret leaves key questions about Carby’s death and the removal of the knife unanswered. The Star put a series of questions to Chief Evans, including whether she issued a reminder to officers that they cannot interfere with an SIU investigation, but Richardson said the questions “are all addressed in the administrative review that was provided to the Peel Regional Police Services Board.”

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Former SIU director Ian Scott told the Star that he can only remember seeing two administrative reviews during his tenure, which dealt with the fatal shootings of Levi Schaeffer and Douglas Minty by OPP officers in separate incidents in 2009.

Those reviews were made public because they were part of a court case that eventually landed before the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2013 that police officers under investigation cannot consult a lawyer before preparing their notes. Scott said there is no requirement for chiefs of police to also provide a copy of their review to the SIU director.

“To my knowledge, none of the chiefs make (the reviews) public,” said Scott. “Certainly not between 2008 and 2013 (when Scott was head of the SIU), and it doesn't look like much has changed.”

Scott said police boards should have a very good reason for not releasing a review, especially in the case of fatal police shootings.

“Given the obviously extreme consequences of the incident, and in order to foster public confidence in policing, I would have thought that more police services would be releasing these reports,” he said.

In the Carby shooting, Scott said he would expect the public to be especially interested in finding out from the review why an officer took a knife from the scene. Peel police have always refused to provide any details about the officer, including his name or rank.

Knowing they may never get answers through Peel’s administrative review, the Carby family is now even more eager to learn if a coroner’s inquest will be held to examine the circumstances of his death and prevent future fatalities.

Ontario’s Coroner’s Act makes inquests mandatory when a person dies while in custody or detained by police. In Carby’s case, it has not yet been determined if an inquest is mandatory. If not, the coroner will have to determine if a discretionary inquest will be held.

But that decision has been held up because the SIU did not send a copy of Loparco’s final report in the Carby case to the coroner’s office until last week — two months after Loparco completed his report. Normally, it would arrive within a week or two of completion, said Dr. William J. Lucas, regional supervising coroner in Ontario’s central west region.

The SIU did not respond to questions about the reasons for the delay, but spokesperson Monica Hudon said: “Whether or not the coroner decides to hold an inquest is not dependent on having the SIU report.”

Lucas said SIU directors’ reports can be helpful in determining if an inquest is mandatory, and he was waiting for it in this case. Now that his office has a copy of Loparco’s report, a decision on whether to hold an inquest in Carby’s death will be made “fairly soon.”