RCMP Watch

The Montreal Gazette
If you have a complaint about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, you can go to an independent review board that will investigate, report and perhaps recommend changes in the way the force operates. It’s a reassuring notion.
So it is a powerful shock to have our noses rubbed in the fact the Mounties have [...]

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Barbara George, the first high-ranking Mountie threatened with contempt of Parliament for misleading MPs, says she will fight until she’s exonerated and reinstated in her job.
Kathryn May, The Ottawa Citizen
Exclusive: Suspended RCMP deputy commissioner Barbara George, who lost her job after being accused of perjury and becoming the public face of the Mounties’ pension-fund fiasco, [...]

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Kathryn May, CanWest News Service
Barbara George, the first high-ranking Mountie threatened with contempt of Parliament for misleading MPs, says she will fight until she is exonerated and reinstated in her job.
The deputy commissioner, who could have been an inside contender to be the country’s top Mountie, was suspended three months ago in the fallout [...]

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Security for the 2010 Olympic Games could be compromised because the cost to police the event has been underestimated, according to RCMP documents obtained by CBC News.
The RCMP, which is co-ordinating the national effort to police the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, is acknowledging for the first time that it will cost more than the original [...]

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Paul Willcocks, Opinion, Prince George Citizen
As questions mounted about the death of Ian Bush, the RCMP repeatedly noted that the shooting would be investigated by the RCMP Commission for Public Complaints.
What they didn’t say was that the top Mounties get to rewrite the commission’s reports before they’re made public.
And they routinely do, clearing officers accused [...]

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Editorial, Pembroke Daily Observer
Prime Minister Stephen Harper may have jumped from the frying pan into the fire with the appointment of a civilian, Bill Elliott, a long-time civil servant, but a complete outsider, as Canada’s new RCMP Commissioner.
The 53-year-old bureaucrat is considered by Parliament Hill watchers to be a decent, honest, hard-working civil servant but [...]

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CTV.ca
A Federal Court judge has ordered the government to release portions of the Maher Arar report that were censored to the public.
Justice Simon Noel ruled Tuesday that he will uncensor some — but not all — of the 1,500 words that had been blacked out, The Globe and Mail reports.
The passages are to be revealed [...]

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Campbell Clark, Globe and Mail
RCMP Commissioner William Elliott must shake up the force’s top brass to ensure he has a loyal team prepared to revamp the organization, says the former civilian head of Quebec’s provincial police force.
Like Commissioner Elliott, Florent Gagné was a senior bureaucrat when he was brought in to head the Sûreté du [...]

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Canadian Press
A report into the RCMP’s handling of a riot last summer on New Brunswick’s Grand Manan Island has been handed over to the province’s Public Safety Minister.
The island’s council lodged a complaint over how the RCMP handled the confrontation between about 40 residents and a man.
Shots were fired, a house was burned to the [...]

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Ted Byfield, Calgary Sun
I was talking last week to a veteran Mountie, retired from the RCMP now for more than 30 years, after a career that was at least that long and took him to the rank, I believe, of inspector, though I’m not sure about that.
“What,” I asked “has gone wrong? Why is it [...]

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