(Canwest News Service) – The findings of retired appeal court justice Thomas Braidwood should have Canadians thinking very carefully about the RCMP present and future.
On Friday Braidwood released a stinging report on how the RCMP mishandled the arrest and fatal Tasering of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski.
And Braidwood was also highly critical of the RCMP in the aftermath of Dziekanski’s death, finding that they failed to correct inaccuracies about the incident when the accurate version may have reflected poorly on the actions of the officers.
But Canadians in cities policed by the RCMP, like Nanaimo, also need to temper their reaction to Braidwood’s damning report. Now more than ever it must be remembered that the RCMP overall do a very good job at what they do best — policing — and local Mounties deserve our support.
No doubt, the RCMP is a police force with big problems. One of the problems that the Braidwood report points to is how the force seems to have diverted its attention from policing communities to policing information.
Policies crafted from the most senior levels make it difficult for citizens to know anything meaningful about what the RCMP is doing in their community.
And part of the context of the Braidwood report is that in the absence of adequate information about what our police are doing, we assume that nothing good happens in secret.
Braidwood raises what has been and continues to be a very difficult issue for the RCMP, and that is a definite lack of experience among uniformed officers.
While the training is excellent and the selection criteria as thorough as possible, there’s a lack of depth when the majority of officers on any given watch are barely into their 30s.
While it’s axiomatic that the real learning happens on the job. and it probably takes at least two years on the streets to make a good police officer, the other issue is the lack of depth among RCMP ranks.
A slew of retirements over the past few years has decimated the force of officers who have learned the hard way.
Policing, like a number of professions, is one where making a mistake can often have serious consequences.
In Nanaimo we are waiting to hear details about the shooting of Jeff Hughes in October last year. Already the few details that have emerged, like the number of shots fired and the fact that officers involved are having investigators talk to their lawyers, are indicating this case may deserve significant scrutiny.
And the RCMP are telling us nothing, again creating a situation where in the absence of information many are assuming they are seeking to hide what happened.
While the few details we know indicate that police were justified in shooting Hughes, the question of the response and whether it exceeded the threat posed still must be answered.
Braidwood raises some difficult questions that may or may not link to the Hughes case, but we cannot forget that his report is not a condemnation of the entire RCMP and its officers.
Despite significant problems there remain good cops doing a good job in their primary mandate, to uphold the law. The safety of the streets in this community are testimony to that.
Where the RCMP must make changes is in accountability. Instead of managing information, they need to focus on managing their duties.
Policing is a tough business, and it seems the RCMP are only making it harder for themselves.
Sheer claptrap. You should debate the psychologist Webster. He actually knows something about psychology even though he is at odds with the RCMP at the moment.. You may even wish to read the Braidwood findings.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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For anyone even slightly familiar with the research data on authoritarian personalities that began to be compiled after events during WW2 showed a clear need for it, what is taking place within the RCMP is not in the least bit surprising. In fact, given the organizations ability to close itself off from outside scrutiny and influence, the development of a dysfunctional culture was an inevitability.
Few would dispute the idea that careers endowing someone with the power and authority that we, as a society, continue to invest in our police and military services, that these career choices would attract persons whom we would think of as having an “authoritarian” personality.
But what far too few people realize is exactly how dysfunctional that kind of person often is. Apart from willingness to do the job, many details of the RWA-SDO personality should make them the LAST kind of person we would want to hire for it.
Research data is clear about RWA traits like their having higher than normal levels of both a generalized, chronic fear as well as an unfocused tendency toward aggression. Now combine that with their positive correlation for having attitudes like racism, sexual bigotry, homophobia or other such gross oversimplifications of the differences among us all, and its easy to see how perhaps the most exasperating feature of them is — at least for those of us who want to see a more just and peaceful world, is the extremely high amount of self-righteous certainty they have over the “rightness” of what they do and believe.
Test scores on a scale used to measure such things reveals them to be miles ahead of the rest of us on this aspect of the authoritarian personality as well.
Ahhh…but I can here some of you out there thinking none of this should matter as long as you’re also a good conservative, law-abiding and God-fearing person too. But the fact is, nobody is exempt from their violence.
Why? Well, you see, RWAs exhibit ALL THE TIME the very same cognitive impairments that are typical of everyone else…..but /only/ when we happen to be frightened or rushed and in a hurry. As such, RWAs have a higher than usual tendency for coming to a premature judgment on matter that could be of vital importance for you or your children.
What’s worse is that once they have settled on a “solution” to their problem, they will strongly resist attempts to change their minds about it, and will continue to maintain their belief in the efficacy of their solution even long after it’s been shown to be faulty….”seizing and freezing” as its called among those who study these matters. What this means in terms of any one of us being falsely arrested, charged and imprisoned should be obvious.
That the highly conservative, authoritarian South has been revealed through DNA testing to have had the most innocent men on Death Row is also something that comes as no surprise to those of us familiar with the research on authoritarian personalities. That the South also has the highest disparity between minorities imprisoned relative to the percentage they make up in the general population also stands as simple confirmation of what I have been telling you here.
Now, I haven’t even begun to list the many disturbing findings that researchers have found just underneath the surface of those who espouse those simplistic, “the law’s the law!” type cliches on our TVs. But there’ should be no doubt whatsoever that these are the same people who flock toward law-enforcement or prison guard positions.
But you’ll never see it on TV that the highest scoring population ever found for a test measuring authoritarian attitudes was when it was administered at San Quentin Prison……and that these scores came from the inmates there, NOT from the guards we hire to watch them.
Or how about a quote from a standard university-level psychology textbook? (Crooks, R., & Stein J. (1991). Psychology: Science, Behavior, and Life (2nd, ed.)
“It appears that conservatism has pathological dimensions manifested in violence and distorted psycho-sexual development” (Boshier, 1983, p. 159). This is supported by a study conducted by Walker, Rowe, and Quincey (1993) in which there was a direct correlation between authoritarianism and sexually aggressive behavior.
What’s my point? In short, if we’re going to start pinning badges on people whom we entrust with the power of life and death over others then we had best make goddamn sure who it is we are giving these badges to. And at the present time, police agencies don’t do nearly enough to weed these people out ….and in fact are hiring and promoting those who display such attitudes due their predecessors having monopolized the upper echelon of law-enforcement during all these years of simply trusting LE agencies to do the right thing.
However it is a basic tenet of any enlightened, democratic nation to maintain civilian control over their military forces. It is now obvious that we must also do the same with our para-military police agencies.
And the reason it is so extremely important is the psychological make-up of most who gravitate toward militarism, be it as a prison guard, an LEO, or the armed forces themselves. Despite the noble-sounding words they use to describe what we in fact pay them to do, at heart a great many of them are just scared, violence-prone, narrow-minded little people who take those jobs for the authority it grants them as well the .dominance over others that they feel incapable of achieving in any other way.
This is also why the psyche profile of those who stand on both sides of the prison bars happen to be strikingly…amazingly… similar.
So…. given these facts, is it any wonder that an organization staffed by such people would adopt its current siege mentality simply because the rest of us want to take a closer look at what they are doing and telling each other that would make them behave with such obvious disdain for others?
Hot debate. What do you think?
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