RCMP Watch

(Vancouver Sun) - According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police report concerning in-custody deaths between 2002 and 2006, the deceased people “lived, for the most part, high-risk lifestyles. Their decisions resulted in their deaths.”That statement, which sounds a lot like blaming the victims, will offer cold comfort to the families of British Columbians who have been shot by RCMP officers in questionable circumstances. And it offers yet more evidence that the RCMP shouldn’t be investigating itself.

Further, British Columbia, where a number of mysterious shootings have occurred, accounted for 56 per cent of all in-custody deaths between 2002 and 2006, despite the fact that only 33 per cent of all RCMP officers work within the province.

The reason for this over-representation is not clear, and it is troubling that the report does not investigate the anomaly further. But various explanations have been proferred, including that the RCMP works more in urban areas in B.C. than in other provinces, that B.C. Mounties are handling more serious crimes than elsewhere, and that this province’s officers are younger and less experienced.

Whatever the reason, though, it’s clear that in-custody deaths are an issue in B.C., and will remain an issue until the province appoints an independent body with the authority and ability to investigate those deaths.

This is not to suggest that the RCMP is out of control in B.C. As the report makes clear, in-custody deaths — which include deaths at the scene and in hospital, as well as those occurring in the cells — are relatively rare events: While the RCMP incarcerates approximately 200,000 people a year, and arrests and releases many more, the report found a yearly average of 16 in-custody deaths.

Further, many people died before being incarcerated, and in 40 per cent of cases, death came as a result of alcohol and/or drug abuse, which suggests that some subjects might well have died whether or not police were present.

The report also notes that few deaths occurred in the police cells themselves, and that the RCMP has improved its procedures to reduce the chances of such deaths occurring.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that being shot by a police officer remains the second most common cause of in-custody deaths, accounting for nearly a quarter of them.

Many of these deaths might have been unavoidable if officers themselves were to avoid being killed, but B.C. has experienced some controversial police shootings in the last few years.

And while the report states that investigations of RCMP shootings determined that in every case “the use of lethal force against the subject was in accord with statute and RCMP policy,” it is those very investigations — often conducted by another RCMP detachment — that are the subject of controversy.

Indeed, we have heard cases where the RCMP has taken an inordinately long time to investigate its own officers, so long in some cases that internal disciplinary hearings have had to be dropped. We also have heard, in an inquiry into the death of Kevin St. Arnaud, that the RCMP admitted there were inaccuracies in an officer’s account of a shooting, but it still concluded he acted in self-defence.

The report states that the RCMP welcomes investigations, reviews and inquiries because they might help to prevent deaths, which is “the raison d’etre of the organization.” If that is so, then the force must also welcome the development of an independent investigative body, because it could help protect the lives of both RCMP officers and the people they are called to serve.
© The Vancouver Sun