Should The RCMP Be Replaced?
That is the question being posed on 770AM CHRQ this afternoon.
In light of the number of scandals and incidents involving the RCMP, their lack of accountability to anyone but themselves, and the lack of trust that growing numbers of Canadians appear to have in them, should they be replaced — and if not, how do we fix them?
If we’re gonna keep them the answer is (IMO) something that is lacking right now – independent oversight (and not by ex-RCMP officers either)…. the idea of the police investigating themselves is wrong on more levels than there are fingers and toes in the bunker.
So far callers to the program are voting “yes”, replace them with something more accountable.
The Force started its downhill slide with the barn burnings of the ’70’s. It’s been a slow agonizing death, and it’s time to put the beast out of it’s misery.
Replacing them may not be a reasonable option, splitting off the secret service apparently didn’t help.
But reminding them that they work for us and no, we won’t trust them to investigate their own affairs, like the contented, mindless sheeple we can be, would help.
Trouble is, with a Conservative government we like have right now, it ain’t gonna happen. They’re such control freaks that think we should be happy to be spied on by government agencies to keep us honest no matter how corrupt the government is. I still wonder how that translates into the right wing theory of smaller government.
@Bruce – Umm, I think we first have to figure out how to bring back the rule of law to the conservative party. Core corruption remains in place with the Cons and the Liberals, first we must cut it out. Presently we have an over-criminalization of the people, the courts are stacked against the people at the moment. We need honest governing back. The political system has become so detached from society that an oligarchy has risen. For instance, no one in their right mind would think we can actually pay for the national debt as it stands. Not without huge tax increases from us and how are we going to resolve that? They will lie to us until we are in the unhinged aged homes for the unhinged. A willing union of people always outlasts an oligarchy, Even that can have a tendency to oligarchy (as the Cons have proved), but historically has outlasted the corrupt ones. Debt collapse always precedes social unrest and that is where (we are headed and so) we need to demand a union of people and parties. Not a coalition, but a real merge. How do you think the Cons managed to be where they are right now? They withstood the charges of traitor (mackay) why can’t we?
The Force needs to stand down while we work this out. LOL!
A “replaced” RCMP would resemble the current RCMP in 95 percent of its DNA. Form follows function – any national police force will end up structured, and behaving, much like the current force. They provide the only law enforcement in most of the country – disbanding them while we work on a replacement isn’t an option.
Their lack of accountability and the apparently rising use of unwarranted violence are the predictable consequences of an armed force of peace officers socially mandated to exercise force, and will be part of the social equation forever. The solutions are boring, but obvious: better training, more transparency, greater accountability.
@balbulican: How about if they were replaced by provincial, regional, or community policing with actual accountability built in to the system?
Then you would multiply the cost of recruitment, training, and administration by a factor of about (I would guess) 10, introduce an incredible tangle of inter-jurisdictional wrangling, and multiply the current challenges associated with accountability, transparency and consistency by as many new agencies as you were establishing. Isn’t it easier to fix ONE system than several hundred?
You make the assumption that the RCMP is fixable – I’m not so sure that it is.
As long as society offers individuals authority, weapons, and the opportunity to exercise force against fellow citizens, any police force will attract a minority of folks drawn to it for exactly the wrong reasons. And every uniform culture on the planet, like any bureaucracy, protects itself.
Until you fundamentally change human nature, those two truths will continue to be part of any police force you design.
Comm. Elliott should have followed the advice of Dr. Linda Duxbury who produced a report at about the first Brown Task Force report. Although Duxbury’s report was commissioned by ex-Comm. Zaccardelli and completed during the brief tenure of ex-Comm. Busson, Duxbury didn’t pull any punches.
She said the RCMP was not a “change-ready” organization and recommended Comm. Elliott be given the financial resources to forcible retire any of the commissioned officers who disagreed with the Brown Task Force findings. Basically, the new broom should have swept clean…. but that didn’t happen.
The current half-hearted attempt to piecemeal repair is going no-where and getting there fast. I know a couple of the commissioned officers in charge of “change management” and they’re part of the problem.
@Mac…. and therein is the problem – the old ways of doing things are so ingrained within the ranks that change without change over simply cannot happen; at least not until there is an oversight body with some teeth created that does not mind picking up the broom and giving the place a vigorous sweeping.
Successful change in such institutions be they private industry or government has to start at the top and be forced downards.
The ultimate masters of the RCMP are suppose to be the politicians in power. So don’t hold your breath waiting for positive change.
My first encounter with a Mountie was on Parliament Hill on a high school trip. A stern looking sergeant told me to get the hell out of a lobby where I was pondering a picture of some old dead white guy. My second encounter was on the Hill during a demonstration for native rights. It started out peaceful, until the RCMP came down swinging batons and lobbing tear gas. My close encounter of the third kind took place in Wrigley, NWT, during a morning walkabout.
As I approached my small hotel, I heard some guy swearing at, and kicking, some older Indian man. I entered the hotel and asked why no one was doing anything to stop it? The Indian lady serving coffee told me the big white guy kicking the shit out of this man was a Mountie and the older man was his yard worker.
I came across a similar scene several yeas later in northern Quebec. This time the man kicking the crap out of some older Inuit man was an officer with the Sureté du Québec (SQ), the provincial police. Flash forward to a southern reserve where I saw another cop kicking the bejeezus out of some older rez man. This time it was a reserve cop, or native constable if you prefer.
Race, skin colour, uniform or type of police force had little to do with any of the above, I suggest. There will always be people prepared to abuse the authority that people entrust with them regardless of any of the above. It is the corporate culture that needs to be changed, as difficult as that may be. It’s been said before, not just here but also in several judicial inquiries and royal commissions; better recruitment, better screening, better training, more accountability at every officer level, much less secrecy, better and more intelligent policing methods at the community level.
I know that here, where I live, the SQ really are seen as an occupying force, to paraphrase a former city councillor speaking about policing problems in predominantly Black neighbourhoods in Toronto. They get overtime pay – not regular pay – and danger pay to sit in their vehicles or occasionally drive through the rez in teams at a cost of $350-k a month. They hand out tickets for minor infractions to folks on the rez but otherwise turn a blind eye to much more serious crimes such as threats of and attempted murder, arson, assault with deadly weapons. Yet plans to get rid of the SQ and replace them with native cops, I suspect, won’t solve a thing – if these native cops are recruited, trained and accountable only to the same bureaucratic machinery that directs the SQ. A fundamental change is needed, not brown-skinned SQ with Indian-head shoulder patches.
Similarly, replace the RCMP with – what?
Replace the RCMP. What we do with all those red jackets? I know, give them to liberal MPs being their party colour and all.