To answer the second question first, I'm not aware of any instances of complaint.
Perhaps this will be the concluding portion of my initial comments. One of the real concerns is that the way in which these provisions are structured—the way in which authorization is granted and the limited way in which reports from public offices are made and the annual reports created—shields the conduct of the police from real scrutiny.
Individuals who may have been the subject of police-justified “crimes” may never know that they should be complaining about police conduct. If someone has been assaulted or threatened under these provisions, they may feel that they were the victim of a true criminal, rather than a justified criminal.
The press cannot scrutinize the conduct of the police in any meaningful way. Indeed, based upon the type of information that the annual reports contain—the limited information that is statutorily required—in my view, those reports do not provide sufficient information to Parliament to meaningfully review the necessity of these provisions, to determine whether resort to these provisions is being undertaken in an appropriate manner, or to determine the effect of these justified crimes upon members of the public.
In this sense, it remains the view of our organization that these provisions unacceptably place the police outside of the usual scheme of the rule of law.