HMIC cited evidence of officers actively seeking out cannabis users in order to administer formal warnings, and a proactive policing team, set up to tackle burglary, being inappropriately redeployed to deal with cases of shoplifting.
According to Statistics Canada, police dealt with about 88,000 cases of shoplifting in 2013 (400 of which were cases where the theft was over $5,000) and laid charges in about half those cases.
It involved anonymous Twitter feeds, including @Yee4Mayor, that dispatched negative tweets on matters like Mr. Yee's voting record and his 1992 arrest in Hawaii on suspicion of shoplifting a bottle of suntan lotion (the case was unresolved).
Perhaps one of the more appalling cases was of a boy in Prince George's County, Maryland, who was accused of shoplifting by a police officer moonlighting as a department store security guard.
Last week in Virginia, a rare manslaughter conviction was handed down in the case of a police officer, Stephen Rankin, who killed William Chapman, an unarmed black 18-year-old accused of shoplifting in Portsmouth in April last year.
"I think that is a bit like the person who is convicted of shoplifting saying the public prosecutor has a terrible problem because he now has no case to prosecute," Mr Clancy says.
I was accused of shoplifting.
Peaches Geldof has been accused of shoplifting.
There are roughly two kinds of shoplifting.
