RCMP Watch

Hobbema, Alberta (Canadian Press) - Three police officers risked their lives on Christmas morning to save a central Alberta woman from a burning house.
At first the intense flames and thick smoke drove officers away from the home in Hobbema, south of Edmonton.
But two Mounties and an officer from the Louis Bull police force wouldn’t give [...]

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Richard Foot (CanWest News Service) - When Giuliano Zaccardelli resigned in disgrace as RCMP commissioner in December, 2006, he declared at his outgoing news conference: “The RCMP is the greatest police force in the world.”
One year later, those words sound as naive and fanciful as a Christmas fairy tale.
In the 12 months since Zaccardelli left [...]

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Andy Ivens (Vancouver Province) - An angel appeared to Bobbie Henderson on Christmas Eve in the form of Langley RCMP Const. Christa Ballard.Henderson, a single mom raising two children, awoke on the morning of Dec. 24 to an uncomfortable breeze from an open window in her Brookswood home.
She got up to investigate and to her [...]

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Calgary, A.B. (AM770CHQR) - Autospy results so far have failed to figure out how a 36-year-old woman died in RCMP cells in Airdrie.
And police still won’t release the name of the victim.
Mounties in Airdrie say the investigation, to this point, indicates her arrest and transport to the jail was not unusual.
She was picked up after [...]

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Vernon, B.C. (Canadian Press) - The RCMP say they used a Taser with little effect before they were forced to shoot and kill a knife-wielding man in Vernon, B.C.
The Mounties say they went to an apartment to arrest a man under the Mental Health Act on Thursday because they had been advised he was suicidal.
“There [...]

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Dirk Meissner, Victoria, B.C. (Canadian Press) - It used to be the image of Dudley Do-Right, the squeaky-clean Mountie, that was etched into the minds of Canadians when they considered the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
But what’s more likely to come to mind now are the chilling last screams of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski as he [...]

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Josh Pringle (CFRA Radio) - The RCMP’s watchdog will investigate the shooting death of a man by the Mounties who was reported to be wielding a knife in Vernon, British Columbia.
The RCMP says officers were called to arrest a man on a warrant issued under the Mental Health Act on Thursday.
A statement from the Mounties [...]

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(Calgary Sun) - An autopsy is scheduled for today for a woman who died in RCMP custody in Airdrie yesterday.
Staff Sgt. Mike Coady said the woman was arrested about midnight following a domestic disturbance in Crossfield and taken to cells in Airdrie.
A guard then checked on the woman around 2 a.m. and found her unconscious [...]

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(Sudbury Star’, Editorial) - The Royal Canadian Mounted Police probably would rather not have been named Newsmaker of the Year by the Canadian Press. From the Mounties’ perspective, the force earned the title for all the wrong reasons.So much painful and embarrassing news emerged from the force’s activities this year that it shook the image [...]

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(CBC News) -People living in rural Saskatchewan communities are worried about a new RCMP backup policy that does not allow officers to respond to violent or potentially violent situations on their own.
Under a new policy approved last week, officers must now go to potentially dangerous situations in pairs.
But residents in the southwestern part of the [...]

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