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O. Reg. 36/13: EQUIPMENT AND USE OF FORCE

filed January 25, 2013 under Police Services Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. P.15

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ontario regulation 36/13

made under the

Police Services act

Made: January 23, 2013
Filed: January 25, 2013
Published on e-Laws: January 25, 2013
Printed in The Ontario Gazette: February 9, 2013

Amending Reg. 926 of R.R.O. 1990

(equipment and use of force)

1. Regulation 926 of the Revised Regulations of Ontario, 1990 is amended by adding the following section:

Acoustic Hailing Devices

16. (1) A member of a police force shall not use an acoustic hailing device, unless,

(a) the device is used only for the purpose of communicating;

(b) the sound levels emitted by the device, or by another device that is the same model and made by the same manufacturer, have been measured at various settings and distances from the device, and an analysis of the resulting measurements is set out in a report;

(c) recommendations about the device are available to the chief of police that,

(i) are based on the report referred to in clause (b),

(ii) address matters such as settings, distances, duration of use and other reasonable protective measures,

(iii) address the expected uses of the device by the police force, and

(iv) are capable of supporting the establishment of procedures under clause (d);

(d) the chief of police has established procedures in respect of the use of the device to protect members of the public from being exposed to a sound level produced by the device that is greater than an equivalent sound exposure level of 85 dBA, Lex,8; and

(e) the member has received training on the procedures referred to in clause (d) and on proper use of the device.

(2) The report and recommendations referred to in clauses (1) (b) and (c) may not be used to satisfy the requirements set out in those clauses unless the person who made the report or recommendations met the following requirements at the time the report or recommendations were made:

1. The person was not a member of the police force of the chief of police referred to in clause (1) (d).

2. The person was independent of the manufacturer of the device.

3. The person was qualified because of knowledge, training and experience to prepare the report or recommendations.

(3) For greater certainty, an acoustic hailing device that is used only to communicate is not a weapon for the purposes of this Regulation.

(4) For greater certainty and for the purposes of clause (1) (a), the use of an alarm or alert tone on an acoustic hailing device to get the attention of members of the public is communicating.

(5) In this section,

“acoustic hailing device” means a device that was designed for communicating voice messages or other sounds over long distances and that is capable of emitting, or was designed to emit, sounds that are 135 decibels or greater when measured at a distance of one metre from the device, but does not include a siren that was designed to be mounted on a vehicle; (“dispositif à ondes acoustiques”)

“dBA” means a measure of sound level in decibels using a reference sound pressure of 20 micropascals when measured on the A-weighting network of a sound level meter; (“dBA”)

“decibel” means a unit of measurement of sound pressure level that is equal to 20 times the logarithm to the base 10 of the ratio of the pressure of a sound, divided by the reference pressure of 20 micropascals; (“décibel”)

“equivalent sound exposure level” is the steady sound level in dBA that is produced by an acoustic hailing device which, if a person were exposed to the sound level for eight hours in a day, would contain the same total energy as that generated by the actual and varying sound levels produced by the device to which the person is exposed in the day, determined in accordance with the following formula:

where,

Lex,8 is the equivalent sound exposure level in 8 hours,

Σ is the sum of the values in the enclosed expression for all activities from i = 1 to i = n,

i is a discrete instance in which a person is exposed to a sound level produced by an acoustic hailing device,

ti is the duration in hours of i,

SPLi is the sound level of i in dBA,

n is the total number of discrete instances in which the person is exposed to a sound level produced by an acoustic hailing device in a day. (“niveau d’exposition sonore équivalent”) 

Commencement

2. This Regulation comes into force six months after the day it is filed.

 

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