Great editorial about the RCMP

[Sid Vicious]

http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/...282/story.html

"...It was then that I realized that I, like most British Columbians, have lost faith in, and respect for, the RCMP as an institution."

[Jsunu]

Here is the article if you dont want to click in:

Why we must look at the RCMP's performance in B.C.


By Tex Enemark, Special to the Sun June 30, 2010



A few weeks ago, I suffered a theft from my car. I started to make a report to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Then I thought, "What's the use?" It was then that I realized that I, like most British Columbians, have lost faith in, and respect for, the RCMP as an institution.

It's not just Air India -- which is decades ago -- or Robert Dziekanski. It's the continuing saga and personal experiences. Every week there are stories about RCMP transgressions that do not bear close scrutiny, and that the RCMP, in their arrogance, have refused to be accountable for, such as the Ian Bush murder. There is, as well, allegations of rampant racism within the force, particularly in areas of B.C. where there are large numbers of ab-originals. "You should hear how they talk about us on police radio," one well-respected, moderate, soft-spoken chief said to me a few weeks ago.

Last week, on one day, there were three such stories in The Vancouver Sun. These range from drunken driving to having inappropriate relationships with witnesses, to deaths that seem less than accidental. And every week there are letters to the editor in papers across the province decrying the behaviour of our police forces.

Justice Thomas Braidwood's report cited four officers for their unbelievable testimony. All future testimony by every RCMP witness is mortally tainted by that comment. Once police lose their reputations for, if nothing else, telling the truth, what public confidence can they command? I feel sorry for future prosecutors and future judges. Having witnesses of doubtful veracity, whose behaviour in the face of clearly documented video evidence is scandalously being supported by the RCMP bureaucracy, is beyond comprehension and forgiveness. Here, apologies are meaningless.

But what to do? Despite the current RCMP charm offensive -- it is negotiating a 20-year renewal of the RCMP police services contract with B.C. -- and promises of better systems of future accountability, one would think that a more appropriate and satisfactory resolution of the problem would be taking steps to ensure better police performance in the future.

But when one starts looking at the issues, one soon realizes that the whole structure of policing in B.C. deserves careful, thorough, integrated examination. That is, municipal police forces create badly divided jurisdictional issues, resulting in poor coordination and gaps between policing efforts. The behaviour of municipal police is no better than the RCMP. The problem in West Vancouver a few years ago, and the recent police beating of an uninvolved bystander by Victoria police -- caught on video -- are examples.

Maybe the fact that the per-capita cost of policing by municipal forces should be examined. Vancouverites, for instance, paid $460 per capita for protective services (which includes fire protection), and Delta, which also has its own police force, paid $381. Surrey, using the RCMP, paid $266.

Why? Is the share of the cost of policing borne by municipal tax payers appropriate? How about the sharing of fine revenues? What about recruiting and training, which seem to be at the heart of many of the RCMP's problems? Is the RCMP's quasi-military command structure appropriate? Is it at all helpful that B.C.'s police personnel ultimately take their orders from Ottawa?

There are hundreds of valid questions that must be asked and answered, and this is the time to do it.

That is, irrespective of the best intentions of today's political leaders, once another 20-year policing contract has been signed, the current RCMP charm offensive will end and, for sure, it will be back to business as usual, despite the criticisms.

B.C. should negotiate a short renewal of the RCMP policing contract, something like five years, and appoint a blue-ribbon panel to examine issues of policing structure, accountability, recruiting, training, policing needs, inter-relationships and so on.

It should not be an examination of scandals haunting the RCMP and other police forces. Rather, it would have a mandate to look to the future, to the requirements of the wider community.

This could be done in 18 months. The government could take 18 months considering the report and considering options, then spend two years implementing them, along with an appropriate transition.

This is not a time for short-term reactions to immediate scandals. This would be a serious attempt, taking time to address one of the fundamental governance questions of this society at this time.

Let us seize that opportunity because, if we do not, we will certainly regret it.

Tex Enemark, a public policy consultant, is a former provincial deputy minister.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

[unit]

i noticed a huge difference between the rcmp and the washington state patrol last weekend i was in seattle.

i was near the clubbing area and there were officers pretty much on every block.
they were standing around, chatting with the party-goers, just being really friendly and not intimidating at all. their presence was felt but it was a real passive assertive tone.

total opposite of the rcmp.

the rcmp stand around in little circles, stare people down, act hard, try to intimidate even though half of them have less than 5 years of experience on the force.
totally different approach, and they try to force you to respect them instead of actually being respectable figures.

[Strzelec]

Originally Posted by unit

i noticed a huge difference between the rcmp and the washington state patrol last weekend i was in seattle.

i was near the clubbing area and there were officers pretty much on every block.
they were standing around, chatting with the party-goers, just being really friendly and not intimidating at all. their presence was felt but it was a real passive assertive tone.

total opposite of the rcmp.

the rcmp stand around in little circles, stare people down, act hard, try to intimidate even though half of them have less than 5 years of experience on the force.
totally different approach, and they try to force you to respect them instead of actually being respectable figures.

Yeah true that. Was in seattle a couple weeks ago, and needed some help, so I asked one of the cops standing outside the venue, they were actually really nice and helped me out. Even the cop that pulled me over on the way back for speeding let me go with a warning and was pretty nice/chatty too.

The RCMP are total assholes when you have to deal with them about anything.

[murd0c]

That's a very good and true atricle, a month back my dads work van got broken into at 130am
They punched 3 locks and didn't steal anything since we caught them in the act and they took
Off unable to catch them. The g/f said to me what should we do and my reaction was put the van
On the side of the house and we will deal with it in the morning
She said what about the police but what would they do? Not a thing just
Waste our time wn I should be sleeping.
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[K-Dub]

Related - I just read this article about Jim Chu from Vancouver Magazine today.

http://www.vanmag.com/News_and_Featu...couver/Jim_Chu

ROBERTO Luongo wasn’t the only guardian under intense scrutiny during the Winter Olympics. The chief of the Vancouver police department, Jim Chu, had the unenviable task of “securing public spaces” during the Games. If the cops did their job well, nobody would notice them; if they slipped up, everyone would notice them, especially after a couple of hundred civilian “observers” were trained by the BC Civil Liberties Association and the Pivot Legal Society.



The police pretty much aced the test. After the drunken debauchery on the first weekend of the Games, Chu “requested” downtown liquor stores close early. He flooded the downtown with mostly genial cops, whose easygoing presence fixed a mood of order. When a group gathered on Hastings Street to block the torch relay, the relay was simply rerouted without incident. As for the so-called “riots” in front of the Bay? Well, the property damage that day, combined with the restraint of the police, was surely a turning point. Vancouverites ambivalent about the Games lost sympathy for the resistance movement then and there. At the opening ceremonies, as Wayne Gretzky rolled down Georgia, police were shockingly hands-off, letting drunken revellers run alongside his pickup like, as one blogger put it, “a parade of shitkickers from Surrey in town for the big night.” As he left town, NBC anchor Brian Williams thanked Canada “for securing this massive event without choking security, and without publicly displaying a single automatic weapon.” The line police are supposed to walk, keeping peace without crimping free expression, they walked.



Because Olympic security was a joint effort with the military and the RCMP, it’s hard to tease out Chu’s influence precisely. Nonetheless, he emerged from the experience somehow annealed. The consensus is that he did an excellent job, that he’s worth every penny of his $303,602 salary, and his public approval is perhaps the highest for a Vancouver police chief ever. Still, some recent examples of VPD misconduct suggest that his greatest challenge lies ahead.


Chu's corner office at the Cambie Street station was so tidy it seemed, on the day I visited, that no one worked there. He came over to meet me at the door. A lot of police officers walk like cops long after they’ve left the street—some memory of the weight and bulkiness of the equipment belt? Not Chu. He is fit and compact and looks about 35, though he is 50. You can see the little kid in him, the seven-year-old school safety-patrol volunteer at General Wolfe elementary who maintained the peace at the corner of Ontario and Templeton. (When Constable Fred Els, the patrol officer, would talk to the kids about life on the streets, there’d be little Jimmy rapt at his feet, soaking it up.)



When Chu speaks of his upbringing, it’s hard not to think of the origin myth of a superhero. The eldest son of immigrants who moved here from Shanghai when he was three, he attended gritty Sir Charles Tupper secondary—the same school that produced gangster Bindy Joal and other ne’er-do-wells. (“Some of the kids I ran into then are dead,” he said. “Some of them I have booked into the jail. Some of the kids had some struggles and then turned their life around. Tupper had its ups and downs.”) Local toughs, headquartered in aptly named Rowdy Park, prowled the neighbourhood looking for nice kids to beat the crap out of.

split up into 6 pages, good read.

[Tegra_Devil]

id be a cop...i still respect them

[goo3]

Originally Posted by unit

i noticed a huge difference between the rcmp and the washington state patrol last weekend i was in seattle.

i was near the clubbing area and there were officers pretty much on every block.
they were standing around, chatting with the party-goers, just being really friendly and not intimidating at all. their presence was felt but it was a real passive assertive tone.

total opposite of the rcmp.

the rcmp stand around in little circles, stare people down, act hard, try to intimidate even though half of them have less than 5 years of experience on the force.
totally different approach, and they try to force you to respect them instead of actually being respectable figures.

i find cops are the nicest when they know and you know they have a shit load of backup around the corner

[rsx604]

How soon we forget about the wonderful Olympic experience. The gold medal day was one of my most fond memories in Vancouver. Celabratory crowd in various states of sobriety, yet peaceful and calm with happy RCMP / VPD members everywhere. There are bad apples in every organization and they're the ones that make news; considering the scope of their work, I think that overall they're doing a more than adequate job.

[Noir]

Originally Posted by rsx604

How soon we forget about the wonderful Olympic experience. The gold medal day was one of my most fond memories in Vancouver. Celabratory crowd in various states of sobriety, yet peaceful and calm with happy RCMP / VPD members everywhere. There are bad apples in every organization and they're the ones that make news; considering the scope of their work, I think that overall they're doing a more than adequate job.

Yeah but good apples don't sell papers as well as bad apples. Go to any country and you won't find a gov't or law enforcement body that's not flawed.

I still maintain that Canada is still one of the best places people have the privilege to reside in. A lot of people are forgetting where they came from and why our parents or grandfathers chose to leave their country of origin.

[Sid Vicious]

Originally Posted by Noir

Yeah but good apples don't sell papers as well as bad apples. Go to any country and you won't find a gov't or law enforcement body that's not flawed.

I still maintain that Canada is still one of the best places people have the privilege to reside in. A lot of people are forgetting where they came from and why our parents or grandfathers chose to leave their country of origin.

So your argument is:
its fine that their are a multitude of scandals wherein the RCMP has either gotten away with homicide, participated in witness tampering, or fucked up an huge investigation because these types of things also happen in other countries?
tax payers have an inherent right and responsibility to criticize their police and should have a definite say in how it is run.

[vafanculo]

Cocky. Asshole. Rude.

Doesn't that sound like the rest of Vancouver?
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[underscore]

I got as far as

"And every week there are letters to the editor in papers across the province decrying the behaviour of our police forces."

and then I stopped. people that write letters to the paper are always fucking morons, and bringing them up in this article just made me laugh at this author.

oh and "well-respected, moderate, soft-spoken chief" made me lol too, simply because it's so over-descriptive

[rien]

Jim chu makes 300k a year?!
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[J____]

Originally Posted by jensing

Jim chu makes 300k a year?!
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for what he has to do and the burden on his shoulders, that's about right.... now if only he did a better job.

[GabAlmighty]

Originally Posted by rsx604

How soon we forget about the wonderful Olympic experience. The gold medal day was one of my most fond memories in Vancouver. Celabratory crowd in various states of sobriety, yet peaceful and calm with happy RCMP / VPD members everywhere. There are bad apples in every organization and they're the ones that make news; considering the scope of their work, I think that overall they're doing a more than adequate job.

Go say that to a guy I know who got shit kicked by a couple RCMP's brought in from the prairies. He had to have his jaw wired shut, plastic surgery on his face, etc, etc.

[Anjew]

at least all we got to bitch about are petty crimes like broken in cars... where as other countries have to deal with massive property damage and dead family members that go unnoticed.

[cressydrift]

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