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BLACK-SHEEP COMMENTARIES by
NO OVERSIGHT ON MOUNTIES February 20, 2008 I am convinced that E division of the RCMP is becoming an insurmountable roadblock to Metro Vancouver regional policing. More than ever before, E division’s sole purpose in British Columbia is self-preservation through maintaining the status quo; and self-preservation is the watchword in each local detachment in the lower mainland. With expiry of police service agreements looming in 2012, our legendary national institution will make the most of it’s near-mythical red serge, using it as a political aphrodisiac to woo local mayors and law ministers into renewing contracts for policing. We must always remember that the RCMP has two lines of business: federal policing and contract policing. The biggest contract is with British Columbia. Our contract with E division, now by far the largest division in the force, has spawned a fiefdom of monolithic paramilitary policing, unaccountable and without civilian oversight. It denies us the right to be masters of policing in our own province. At the Feb 6 forum on regional policing I watched and listened to a broad spectrum of speakers debating the relative merit of hypothetical regional policing against a backdrop of our mongrel status quo patchwork of five independent municipal police departments and eight RCMP detachments. That totals 13 chiefs: five of them herded by police boards and the solicitor general in Victoria; the other eight herding their local mayors while working under the command structure of E division and headquarters in Ottawa. Vancouver Chief Const. Jim Chu wryly pointed out that “If we had a clean slate to design the ideal police structure for our region, we wouldn’t have the structure we have now.” Two outsiders, the chief of Ottawa’s regional police and an Ontario mayor, gave fascinating accounts of practical and emotional difficulties in establishing regional policing. These bemused easterners made it clear that the real catalyst for regional policing is provincial government leadership and compulsion. Solicitor General John Les spoke rapturously about integrated squads being the best way to go. He has yet to explain that as these combined units go about their three-legged police work only the municipal police officers are bound by B.C.’s Police Act and complaint process. Consider a hypothetical variation of the recent case of Robert Dziekanski who died within minutes of being tasered by one of four RCMP officers from the Richmond detachment. If the four officers who confronted Dziekanski had been an integrated airport unit consisting of two Vancouver police officers and two RCMP members, our law ministers would have had jurisdiction to deal with the VPD members but not the RCMP members. What a fiasco. As reported in the North Shore News, Vancouver’s police union president Tom Stamatakis said “We have a fractured delivery of police services in this region.” He argued that the recent creation of integrated task forces, like the integrated homicide investigation team and the integrated gang task force, don’t go far enough, and could actually do more harm than good. “We’re misleading the public” said Stamatakis. Les and Oppal did a song-and-dance version of “let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water.” Their precious baby is an RCMP-dominated co-operative of dissimilar police forces, cobbled together by integration of special services. The bath water is the about-to-be renewed contract under which our national police force will be hired again in 2012 to do another 20 years of provincial policing. I walked away from the forum deeply troubled by the speeches of Solicitor General John Les and Attorney General Wallace Oppal. It is what each minister scrupulously avoided saying that is most troubling: that they are committed to a continuation of a contract force no matter how constitutionally wrong it may be and that they know full well that the RCMP is incapable of meeting its contractual obligations. A very curious oversight on the part of Les and Oppal and particularly Surrey’s mayor Diane Watts was their failure to mention the same-day announcement by the federal ministry of public works that the administrative headquarters of E division was moving to Surrey; and that it would be established by 2012 at the latest. In speaking against regionalization of policing, Watts kept silent about her bird in hand. It is beyond reasonable belief that this trio new nothing about the move. I am appalled that not a word was said by the ministers concerning longstanding and continuing turmoil and dysfunction in our national police force. It is detailed in two recent reports: Rebuilding the Trust: Report of the Task force on Governance and Cultural Change in the RCMP, issued by chairman David Brown and submitted to federal Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day on December 14, 2007; and an ancillary study by Dr. Linda Duxbury: The RCMP Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow – An Independent Report concerning Workplace Issues at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. On filing his report David Brown spoke to the media. At the outset he paid tribute to the fierce pride in the force and dedication of the rank and file members to provide policing. Brown then spoke gravely, saying the members work under “management systems that haven’t worked for years; mandatory unpaid overtime; discipline and grievance systems that don’t work; a promotion system with little or no credibility; a sometimes embarrassing record of accounting to the people they serve.” … That the force “… cannot spend its days mired in endless bureaucracy and administration with the federal government. The RCMP is not just another federal department – nor should it be.” That the “force has a culture, management structure and corporate governance that isn’t working (and) that the problems facing the RCMP today are deep and fundamental.” I will have much more to say about Rebuilding the Trust in future columns. In the meantime take a look yourself by going to: http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/rcmp-grc/nr-eng.aspx The RCMP is broken. Not even with David Brown’s 49 recommendations will all the Queen’s ministers and bureaucrats in uniform be able to mend yesterday’s Humpty Dumpty and put it back together again as tomorrow’s modern police force. – North Shore News – Feb 20.08 Contact Judicial Gadfly at: wallace-gilby-craig@realjustice.ca Or post a comment on the Writer’s Corner of www.realjustice.ca |
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