Gabriel Zarate (Nunatsiaq Online) – Though Iqaluit’s RCMP detachment will be almost fully staffed for the next few years, there still aren’t enough cops in town to meet the rising demand for police services, Steve McVarnock, the chief superintendent of Nunavut’s V division, said last week.
McVarnock said a standard analysis of the city’s population growth and the detachment’s workload showed the detachment needs more RCMP members.
Last January, McVarnock received the RCMP’s estimate for Iqaluit’s police needs, based on crime statistics 2007-08 crime statistics.
The report found Iqaluit needs more RCMP members. Continued…
Categories: Lack of Resources.
(The Province) – A Vernon Mountie won’t be behind the wheel of a police cruiser anytime soon.
Const. Jody Turpin has lost his licence for a year and must pay a $1,000 fine in a case related to drunk driving.
Turpin was arrested Dec. 19 after two officers noticed a man sitting behind the wheel of his parked, personal vehicle.
The officers suspected the off-duty officer was about to drive while impaired.
Turpin pleaded guilty last week for failing to provide a breath sample while impaired driving charges against him were stayed. He is still the subject of an internal RCMP investigation that could lead to several sanctions, ranging from loss of pay to dismissal from the force.
Categories: Mounties Charged.
Kent Driscoll Aptn, Iqaluit, Nunavut (Canadian Press) – A Nunavut man convicted of killing an RCMP officer didn’t utter a single word as a judge sentenced him to “a living death.”
Justice Robert Kilpatrick told a packed courtroom Friday that he had no option but to send Ping Kolola, a 39-year-old father of six, to prison for life with no possibility of parole for 25 years.
“The law requires that he be sentenced to a living death,” Kilpatrick said. “Mr. Kolola will be old when he is paroled. His life will have passed him by.
“This sentence marks the end of living for Mr. Kolola and the beginning of his survival.” Continued…
Categories: The Ultimate Sacrifice.
Alison Auld, Halifax, N.S. (Canadian Press) – The RCMP says they dropped a disciplinary review of an officer who shot a Nova Scotia man dead because they couldn’t ask another police agency to expedite a separate investigation into the incident.
RCMP Chief Supt. Blair McKnight said the force didn’t start the review within a year as it’s required to by law because it couldn’t urge Halifax police to complete their investigation out of concern that would’ve interfered with their probe.
“We need to maintain that independence,” McKnight said. “The criminal investigation needs to take the time it takes without us unduly influencing or directing to get it done.” Continued…
Categories: Failing to do Their Duties, Mounties Investigating Mounties, Senior Management, Shoddy Investigations.
Michael Tutton, Halifax, N.S. (Canadian Press) – No discipline will be imposed on an RCMP officer who fatally shot a Nova Scotia man in his own home because the force neglected to start a review of the constable’s actions within its legally required time frame.
In January, the RCMP launched a disciplinary review of Constable Jeremy Frenette’s actions in 2008 shooting of John Simon, weeks after receiving a report by the Halifax police into the incident.
But the review ended shortly after it began once the Mounties realized it did not start the process within a year as required by law, RCMP spokeswoman Brigdit Leger said Thursday.
“It was a gap in our process,” said Ms. Leger. Continued…
Categories: Broken Force, Failing to do Their Duties, Mounties Investigating Mounties, Oversight of the RCMP, Senior Management, Shoddy Investigations.
(CBC News) – An Iqaluit jury has found Pingoatuk Kolola guilty of murdering an RCMP officer in a remote Nunavut community more than two years ago.
The 11 jurors in the Nunavut Court of Justice trial convicted Kolola, 39, on Thursday of first-degree murder in the Nov. 5, 2007, shooting death of Const. Douglas Scott in the eastern Arctic community of Kimmirut.
Scott, 20, was shot while responding alone to a drunk-driving complaint in the remote Baffin Island hamlet of about 400, located 120 kilometres south of Iqaluit on Baffin Island.
Kolola admitted to firing the rifle shot that killed Scott, but maintained it was an accident. Defence lawyers asked the jury to convict Kolola on the lesser charge of manslaughter. Continued…
Categories: The Ultimate Sacrifice.
(CBC News) – A Yukon Supreme Court judge has heard testimony from a woman who claims two off-duty RCMP officers raped her a year ago, but defence lawyers argued it was the complainant who initiated sexual contact with the Mounties.
The woman, who cannot be identified under a publication ban, has testified that constables Graham Belak, 30, and Shawn McLaughlin, 33, sexually assaulted her in the early-morning hours of March 8, 2009, in the southern Yukon town of Watson Lake.
Belak and McLaughlin were both suspended from the RCMP with pay after the charges were laid. They have since moved out of Watson Lake, as has the woman. Continued…
Categories: Mounties Charged.
Saskatchewan (CBC News) – An 85-year-old Canora, Sask., woman says she got the shock of her life after a police car crashed into her garage on Saturday night, wrecking the building and the car inside.
Doris Lukiniuk told CBC News said she had just sat down to watch the Telemiracle telethon Saturday night, when she heard a woosh and a bang.
She went to investigate and saw splintered wood everywhere. She also saw her car had been rammed out the other side of the garage.
In its place was a police car, with emergency lights still flashing, but no driver — the officer had left the scene.
Continued…
Categories: RCMP.
(CBC News) – The husband of a woman who claims two off-duty RCMP officers sexually assaulted her has told a Yukon Supreme Court judge that he regrets not accompanying his wife to the party where she met the officers.
The woman, who cannot be identified because of a publication ban, claims that constables Shawn McLaughlin, 33, and Graham Belak, 30, attacked her in the southern Yukon town of Watson Lake last year.
At Belak and McLaughlin’s trial, taking place this week in Whitehorse, court has heard that the woman was seen leaving a house party with the two off-duty officers early on March 8, 2009.
The woman later told medical staff that they went back to Belak’s place, where Belak allegedly raped her while McLaughlin held her arms down. Continued…
Categories: Mounties Charged.
Gabriel Zarate, Nunavut, Iqaluit (Nunatsiaq News) – The fate of a Nunavut man on trial for the killing of an RCMP officer more than two years ago rests on one issue — intent.
An 11-person jury sitting in Iqaluit retired mid-afternoon Monday to decide between a verdict of first-degree murder or one of manslaughter in the trial of Pingoatuk Kolola, accused of killing RCMP Const. Douglas Scott in November 2007 as the officer was responding to a drunk driving complaint in the northern town of Kimmirut.
“In Canada, any blameworthy death that is not murder is called manslaughter,” Justice Robert Kilpatrick said Monday in his instructions to the jury.
Intent has become the crux of the issue that Crown and defence lawyers have left in the hands of the jury. Continued…
Categories: The Ultimate Sacrifice.
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