Is our democratic state still vulnerable to police state tactics? Do cops go rogue, or merely reckless, at election time?

Consider the police shock wave that nearly changed the course of the June 12 Ontario election.

Eight days before voting day, the Ontario Provincial Police went to court seeking a judge’s order for additional evidence — part of a two-year-old probe into alleged Liberal misconduct over two gas-fired power plants. The plodding investigation had been losing steam for months, falling off voters’ radar despite opposition scandal-mongering.

Suddenly, thanks to the bizarrely timed intervention of the provincial police into provincial politics, it was big news — front and centre in the election home stretch.

Leaked to the Ottawa Citizen, the news was a gift to the Tories and New Democrats on the campaign trail. And a curse for the Liberals, who watched their lead in the polls drop sharply in the wake of renewed media coverage and a reinvigorated opposition.

Really, in 2014? Are police so clueless, guileless, reckless and feckless that they’d unleash a political bombshell on election eve — potentially turning the course of a campaign?

Yes, the provincial Liberals won anyway. But in the heat of a campaign it’s impossible to predict how the news cycle will play out, how social media can go viral, and how the heavy hand of the police might be portrayed.

We’ve seen this movie — and police script — before. Like the OPP this year, the RCMP made news in mid-campaign eight years ago — and the rest is history:

The 2006 federal election was rocked by the RCMP’s disclosure that it was probing alleged criminality by then Liberal finance minister Ralph Goodale. He was subsequently exonerated, but the RCMP’s unprecedented press release likely turned the tide of the election in favour of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has been in power ever since.

That was the sobering conclusion of RCMP public complaints commissioner Paul Kennedy, who initiated his own probe of the Mounties’ misconduct. Over RCMP objections, he issued a searing 35-page report that argued, “Police officers who hold a public function … ought to be accountable for articulating why they did or did not do something.”

In a 2009 Star column, the late Jim Travers described the RCMP’s intervention as “an outrage so beyond the Canadian experience that it remains hard to believe it happened here.”

Yet it has happened again, right here in Ontario. And, like the RCMP’s then commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, the OPP would rather avoid questions about its own questionable conduct.

OPP Commissioner Vince Hawkes refused to be interviewed for this column, sticking to a prepared statement. (Curious how a police force that routinely asks people to sit down for interviews won’t answer questions about itself.)

Unsurprisingly, the OPP’s intervention played into the hands of the opposition.

“Armed police knocking on the doors of Queen’s Park is a clear sign … it is time to clean up Queen’s Park,” proclaimed MPP Gilles Bisson, the NDP campaign co-chair.

“Voters aren’t going to stand for a coverup,” added then PC leader Tim Hudak, who called for a judicial inquiry.

It’s hard to fault opportunistic opposition politicians or aggressive detectives for pursuing the case. But just as zealous journalists are overseen by experienced editors, hard-driving detectives also require adult supervision.

Why not wait a few days before pursuing their routine request through the courts, given the hothouse atmosphere of a campaign that can be won or lost on the basis of last-minute allegations? The OPP won’t answer questions.

Going to a judge on June 4 was the “decision of the assigned Major Case Manager,” it said in a statement. “The OPP does not suspend, accelerate or intensify its investigative activities during an election period.”

So after two years of painfully slow probing, police couldn’t wait a week — opting instead to roll the dice, rattle cages and make a splash just before voting day? Are they really that oblivious and obtuse about timing, or do police only pretend to have tin ears?

That’s not to suggest the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover or the RCMP’s Zaccardelli have been reincarnated to run the show at the OPP. A fearless police force is a fine thing, but it shouldn’t be so intoxicated by its power that it thinks nothing of wreaking havoc with the democratic process.

The RCMP was held to account for its misconduct in 2006, but not the OPP in 2014. It remains a police force — and a political force — answerable only to itself.

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Martin Regg Cohn’s provincial affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn