James Keller, Vancouver, B.C. (Canadia Press) – An RCMP cadet wearing a blue T-shirt and her hair tied back in a bun stands remarkably still against a chain-link fence as a steady stream of pepper spray is blasted at her face.
She opens her eyes and immediately starts whimpering from the pain, scrambling to complete a set of tasks that include repeatedly kneeing a fake suspect and finding a radio lying on the ground to call for help
“I can’t breathe,” she says through tears once the exercise is over, exhausted and hunched over one of her instructors at the RCMP’s training centre in Regina.
It’s a scene from “Courage In Red,” a television series that broadcast for the past two months documenting the daily lives of RCMP members, from the grind of basic training to isolated policing in the far North.
The TV show, which watches like a recruiting video, is an attempt to boost the Mounties’ profile at a time when Canadians are increasingly skeptical of this country’s national police force, with recent scandals and controversies continuing to tarnish their iconic image.
It might take more than a feel-good television series to repair the force’s battered image ahead of a year that could prove pivotal for the RCMP’s future in this country.
Reports from the public inquiries into Robert Dziekanski’s death and the 1985 Air India bombing are almost complete, major policing operations such as the Vancouver Olympics and the G20 will be under heavy public scrutiny, and all of that will come before 2012 contract negotiations with provincial and territorial governments, at least one of which has mused about dropping the RCMP altogether.
Observers say the RCMP can survive its current malaise, but only if it successfully addresses very real concerns that the force isn’t accountable and has no appetite for change.
“There’s been a number of high-profile cases in which the RCMP have been involved and people are wondering whether or not the methods that are in place for investigating and holding the police to account are adequate,” says David MacAlister, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University.
The recent list of the RCMP’s perceived failings is repeated often: the force’s involvement in the Maher Arar affair, the fatal shooting of Ian Bush in B.C., the controversial decision to announce its income trust investigation in the middle of a federal election, Dziekanski’s death at Vancouver’s airport after he was stunned with a Taser.
In nearly all of those cases, one of the central issues has been whether there is enough oversight of the RCMP, especially in cases involving allegations of wrongdoing or abuse, and how willing – or unwilling – the force is to identify problems and fix them.
The Mounties tend to handle most criminal investigations involving their own members, and provincial oversight bodies typically have no jurisdiction over the national force. The RCMP’s own watchdog can only make non-binding recommendations, and some critics say those recommendations are too often ignored.
MacAlister argues there simply isn’t sufficient oversight of the RCMP, and until that changes, he says, the force’s image problems will only grow worse.
“People are probably starting to wonder why do we have the RCMP? They’re not accountable locally, so why would we bother keeping them?” he says.
It’s an issue Paul Kennedy, the outgoing chair of the force’s complaints commission, has taken a particular interest in.
Kennedy released a report earlier this year that called on the RCMP to stop investigating itself in serious cases to avoid conflict of interest. He repeated that recommendation in a report earlier this month that scolded the officers involved in Dziekanski’s death and criticized the subsequent homicide investigation.
The RCMP, however, has appeared hesitant to accept Kennedy’s recommendations, saying changes are in the works but suggesting a blanket policy forbidding the force from investigating its own officers would be impractical.
The force and the federal government also say they’re waiting for the Dziekanski and Air India reports before deciding just what changes to make.
But Kennedy notes he isn’t the first to question RCMP oversight, pointing to a federal task force report two years ago that called for sweeping changes to the management, structure and oversight of the Mounties.
That report called for a new watchdog that could make binding recommendations regarding discipline and could decide whether the RCMP, an outside police force or its own staff would investigate complaints involving Mounties.
Kennedy says the RCMP knows what’s wrong and how to fix it, and should have acted by now.
“There’s a degree of frustration that the institution itself is not responding quickly enough and transparently enough,” says Kennedy, whose appointment expires at the end of December.
“People’s opinions tend to get shaped by the isolated negative failures, but that makes it more important for you to deal with those so that doesn’t become the defining aspect of your reputation.”
For its part, the RCMP is still asking for patience.
William Elliott was appointed as the first civilian commissioner of the force in 2007 amid a push to reform the RCMP: “There is simply no other option. The RCMP must change,” he said later that year.
Two years later, critics of the force say it’s been business as usual since Elliott took over, and they’re still waiting.
RCMP Sgt. Tim Shields, who has had the unlucky job of serving as the force’s media relations officer in B.C. during the high-profile public inquiry into Dziekanski’s death, readily acknowledges the Mounties have work to do, and he insists change is imminent.
“It’s without question that the RCMP’s image has taken a hit, and we are going to work as hard as we can to try and rebuild that trust with the public,” says Shields.
“What is important is that the public sees that there is an effective system in dealing with those mistakes and that changes are made as a result of that system.”
Shields acknowledges 2010 could be a make-or-break year for the force, especially with the public watching the massive RCMP-led security operation during the Vancouver Winter Olympics.
There will be about 6,000 police officers watching over the Games, including 4,300 Mounties, and the unit has already faced complaints about heavy-handed tactics in dealing with anti-Olympic activists.
“I think it’s fair to say that this is a very critical time for the RCMP,” Shields says.
“I doubt that the organization has been the focus of as much media attention as we received over the past couple of years, and our response to some of these major incidents is going to determine the outcome of public opinion and possibly the future of the force.”
The RCMP and Ottawa will soon be under even more pressure to reform the force, with the two reports they’ve been waiting for due out soon. The reports from the Dziekanski inquiry in Vancouver and the Air India inquiry in Ottawa are each expected to be released early next year.
How the force responds will be important nowhere more than in British Columbia, where, like most provinces and territories in Canada, the RCMP serve as the regional police force.
The province has been blanketed with coverage of several high profile cases in recent years, including the deaths of Ian Bush, Kevin St. Arnaud as well as Dziekanski, and the solicitor general has expressed frustration that the force isn’t covered by B.C.’s police watchdog.
The RCMP polices about three-quarters of the province, and Solicitor General Kash Heed, himself a former municipal police chief, has said he wants all officers in B.C. under a single discipline and investigation process.
B.C.’s contract with the RCMP expires in 2012, and Heed has said bringing the RCMP under the provincial Police Act will be a prerequisite for any new agreement. He has also raised the possibility of ditching the Mounties altogether and replacing them with a provincial force.
Joseph D’Cruz, a professor at the University of Toronto who has studied police leadership, says the real test of any changes the force makes will come the first time the RCMP has to respond to a controversy.
He says the issue has never been the competence of individual officers, but how the force’s top brass reacts when one of its members slips up.
Even at the Olympics, D’Cruz says the RCMP’s actual performance likely won’t matter much in terms of public opinion. But if something goes wrong at the Games, that could actually present the Mounties with an opportunity to demonstrate they’re finally taking the issue seriously.
“If they run into a problem at the Olympics and they handle it well in terms of how they respond – if there were mistakes that were made, that they admit them and then take the appropriate disciplinary action – I think they’ll come across very strongly at the end of the day,” he says.
In the meantime, the force is working to highlight its good works and counter what at times must feel like near-constant criticism.
That may well explain why the RCMP agreed when Ottawa-based JenCor Entertainment approached them with the idea for “Courage In Red,” which aims to tell the personal stories of officers and happily steers clear of the controversies facing the force.
Producer Jessica Webb, who also worked on “Truth Duty Valour,” a similar TV series that focused on the Canadian Forces, says it’s about putting a human face on a massive and complex organization.
“We thought there was a need for Canadians to know more about the RCMP, not just the organization but the people,” says Webb, who is 26.
“Even as a young Canadian myself, I didn’t know a lot about the RCMP until I started working on this project. That obviously is an indication that they haven’t made themselves more accessible to Canadians.”
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