Jordan Wilkins (Spruce Grove Examiner) – A former Stony Plain RCMP officer is discouraged with how his harassment complaints were handled by the national police force.
Gerry Hoyland, who has been a Mountie for 34 years, was a corporal with the Stony Plain detachment for eight years between 1998 and 2005 and says that he was the victim of some form of harassment almost every day during his duration with the unit.
“The harassment consisted of vandalizing my personal vehicle, saving pornography on my computer and tampering with my food,” Hoyland said. “They called these things ‘practical jokes’ but I don’t think I’d call it anything other than harassment. It got to the point where I felt safer on the streets than I did in the detachment.”
Hoyland also recalled an incident where a photo of his face was pasted on the body of a Sunshine Boy and displayed to people around the office.
Although Hoyland said he complained numerous times to many superiors during his tenure at the detachment, he says nothing was ever done to stop the harassment, causing him to leave for stress relief in 2005.
In 2006 he filed his first formal complaint with the harassment that occurred, but after the complaint being dismissed by both the commanding officer of ‘K’ division and the Level 1 commanding officer in B.C., it was never recognized that Hoyland had been harassed and no disciplinary action ever occurred.
Then in 2008, Hoyland submitted his case to the RCMP External Review Committee (ERC) where last May they found that the initial findings of his complaint were erroneous and recommended to the Commissioner of the RCMP that he acknowledge the harassment and apologize for the fact that the harassment investigation and decisions in his case were inconsistent with the applicable harassment policies.
Hoyland has not yet received an apology.
Although he can only speculate, Hoyland feels that he was singled out because he would hold other officers accountable for poor investigations and for their personal use of RCMP equipment.
This is not a unique case Hoyland said, and according to the ERC, as of last December there were still a total of 67 outstanding grievances dating back to 2007 that the RCMP had not yet taken action on, so Hoyland doesn’t expect a resolution any time soon.
This type of harassment goes well beyond the Stony Plain detachment, Hoyland said, and while he recognizes that most of those involved in his own harassment case are no longer working for that detachment, these weren’t isolated incidents.
“I wish very good things for the RCMP but I don’t think that that’ll happen for at least a generation,” Hoyland said. “This kind of stuff is going on right across the entire RCMP.”
During the last RCMP Employee Opinion Survey conducted in 2009, 34 per cent of employees felt that their complaints were not dealt with effectively.
Thirty per cent of employees felt that their health, safety and well-being wasn’t being promoted.
Forty-nine per cent felt that the employees are respected and trusted.
Hoyland has been off-duty sick since 2005, but was surprised to get a notice that he was deemed unemployable in any capacity, followed up with a notice of intention to seek discharge because of a physical or mental disability, but says that he has never been told what that disability is, something he feels is happening all too often in the RCMP.
“It’s disappointing because a lot of the people going on ODS are the top performers that the RCMP has,” Hoyland said. “My career has certainly been ruined. What I had to put up with made me ill for a while, but I’m certainly healthy now.”
“I’m one of the hundreds that this is happening to.”
Hoyland has currently filed a harassment lawsuit against the RCMP and several former members of the Stony Plain detachment and is expected to go to trial sometime next year.
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