Ottawa, Ontario (AHN) – Complaints against the Royal Canadian Mounted Police grew by 35 percent the past year to 1,692 from 1,258 the previous year, according to the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP.
The commission, which released its annual report Thursday, listed five areas that the RCMP must immediately address.
First is for the Mounties to properly inform complainants of their right to request a review from the Commission of the disposition of their complaints. Second is for the RCMP to stop resolving informally accusations of serious misconduct. Third is lack of support for allegations made versus RCMP members.
The fourth area requiring immediate RCMP attention is its misclassification of a complainant withdrawing his case as an informal resolution. Fifth is the lack of information about the RCMP public complaint process in Nunavut, Yukon and the Northwest Territories.
High on the list of RCMP complaints that the commission is investigating is the misuse of Tasers by the Mounties. Then Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day ordered the commission in November 2007 to review the Mounties’ protocol on use of the electronic stun gun. In June 2008 the commission issued its final report recommending 12 measures that asked RCMP to limit their use of Taser, clarify to members and the public when is it permissible to use the stun gun and for the RCMP to coordinate and strengthen efforts on reporting, data collection and analysis of Taser use.
Following the public uproar over the use of Tasers which sometimes resulted to death of its victims like Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, the commission observed a drop by almost 50 percent in use of Tasers.
While there has been media attention over the use of Tasers, what actually topped the list of complaints against Mounties was attitude, which accounted for 20.6 percent. “This category of complaint can include dismissive, rude, non-responsive, or biased behavior on the part of the member as well as behavior that is seen to be unfair or lacking empathy,” the report said.
The report, made public by Commission chair Paul Kennedy, recommended to the Minister of Public Safety six measures to improve the RCMP’s overall complaint systems. The recommendations include the establishment of best practices, the implementation of efficient mean of tracking public complaints on a national level and to have standardized training for RCMP members involved in handling public complaints and writing dispositions.
Check out my previous posts in this regard and you will find that by and large the RCMP has fewer complaints that other major forces, on a person/complaint ratio. The figures were taken from the various agencies charged with recording and investigating those complaints. As I mention there, one person instituted a very large number of frivolous complaints which skew any statistics.
The fact that the RCMP responds to approximately 3 million calls for service in a year does not add to the nay sayers debate and therefore is not often quoted. 1600 odd complaints vs 3,000,000 contacts with the police is certainly self evident. There has been and always will be “bad apples” in any organization and the police universe is no different as it is a make up of the population. It is not perfect.
I understand your frustration with respect to the wholesale broad brush condemnation of the RCMP or any organization because of some issues. Some people have a very difficult time in distinguishing between who is doing what as you pointed out in another thread.
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What i love is that there are all these complaints but he doesn’t mention how many million of calls to service that the RCMP responded to that there weren’t any complaints etc.
I am tired of senseless media destruction of a fantastic institution. Yes it has it’s problems but show me any company, police force etc that doesn’t have any problems.
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“The type of issues raised in complaints made to the Commission in 2008-2009 followed similar trends from previous years, the most common complaint issue relates to member attitude (20.6%). This category of complaint can include dismissive, rude, non responsive, or biased behaviour on the part of the member as well as behaviour that is seen to be unfair or lacking empathy.”
“The CPC observed a marked increase in the number of findings and recommendations that the Commissioner of the RCMP agreed with. Of the amount of adverse findings made, the Commissioner agreed with 75% of them. Furthermore, he accepted 85% of the CPC’s recommendations.”
No stats on the chronic complainers this year.
CPC latest annual report.
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Complaints against Mounties way up
United Press International
June 12, 2009
The federal watchdog of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said public complaints against the force rose almost 35 percent last year.
The independent agency said for the year ending March 31, the leading type of complaint was of “rude, dismissive, biased or non-responsive behavior by an officer,” which accounted for about 20 percent of complaints, the Ottawa Citizen reported.
Second, at 17.3 percent, were complaints of the manner in which criminal investigations were conducted. Among the allegations made by the public were concealment of facts or misreporting and improper witness interviews, the report said.
The watchdog also said it would release its findings into the growing use of, and public concern over, the use of Taser stun guns.
Meanwhile, it said in all incidents in which RCMP officers removed the stun gun from the holster, it was fired only 50 percent of the time, indicating it is being used as a deterrent, the newspaper said.
The report said the number of public complaints rose to 1,692 in 2008-2009 from 1,258 the previous year and 956 in 2006-2007, the Citizen said.