RCMP Watch

(Globe and Mail - Editorial) - If there’s a medal reserved for courageous police boards, the Saskatchewan Police Commission deserves it. It has stood up against police orthodoxy nearly everywhere in Canada to voice honest doubts about tasers. “There’s a grave danger of them being abused,” chair Michael Tochor said yesterday. He also expressed doubts [...]

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Petersfield, MB (Winnipeg Free Press) - Nine months after she alleges four RCMP officers held her down in a jail cell and Tasered her three times, this 17-year-old girl lifts the bottom of her cotton shorts, revealing pale scars on her thigh from where the weapon reportedly shocked her.
The teenager and her parents are in [...]

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The Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP (CPC) today made public its 2007-2008 Annual Report, which was submitted to Parliament by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day. The Chair of the Commission, Paul Kennedy, renewed his call for credible and effective civilian RCMP oversight by strengthening the financial resources and legislative mandate of the CPC. [...]

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Rod Mickleburgh, Vancouver, B.C. (Globe and Mail) - An internal RCMP investigation has cleared officers involved in an ugly melee that sent a dozen natives, including women, several children and a six-month-old baby, to hospital after police unleashed a fusillade of pepper spray against celebrants riding in a soccer victory parade.
The incident, some of which was [...]

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Linda Nguyen (Ottawa Citizen) - The RCMP officer who pepper-sprayed a group of aboriginals, including a seven-month-old baby, celebrating a soccer game victory on a Sechelt, B.C., reserve last July has been cleared of wrongdoing, an internal investigation concluded.
First Nations Summit Grand Chief Edward John, an independent observer during the investigation into the July 2, 2007, [...]

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Pieta Woolley (Straight.com) - Last year’s RCMP pepper-spraying of several Sechelt band infants, youths, and elders was “regrettable” but “appropriate in the circumstances”, according to a police report obtained by the Georgia Straight. Then-chief Stan Dixon laid a complaint into the July 2007 incident with the Sunshine Coast RCMP detachment. Of the four allegations of [...]

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Dirk Meissner, Williams Lake, B.C. (Canadian Press) - Jurors at a B.C. coroner’s inquest into an RCMP shooting death say all officers should be trained in the use of tasers.
American Donald Lewis died of a gunshot wound in August of 2006 near McLeese Lake, B.C., in an altercation with an RCMP officer.
Constable Cole Brewer told [...]

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Vancouver, B.C. (Canadian Press) Germain Quesnel sat in an RCMP cell for an hour, believing he was having a heart attack.
He had just received two blasts from a police Taser to his chest because Staff Sgt. Lorne Malkoske said he wouldn’t move away from the cell door. Quesnel, who had had two previous heart attacks, [...]

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Nicki Thomas (Sun Media) - Fort McMurray RCMP officer is on desk duty after finding himself in hot water.
Const. Brian Vaughn, 29, is facing charges that include possession of stolen property, unsafe storage of a firearm and obstruction of justice.
A complaint alleging Vaughn was improperly storing a firearm was made last December, said RCMP spokesman [...]

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Frank Peebles (Prince George Citizen) - The Citizen has learned the investigation into the on-the-job behaviour of Prince George RCMP Supt. Dahl Chambers has been upgraded from a simple fact-finding review to an official disciplinary probe by the RCMP.
It is nearly complete, according to RCMP sources, and does not, in itself, determine guilt or innocence [...]

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