William Marsden (Montreal Gazette) – A secret RCMP report indicates that the Quebec division of Canada’s most vaunted police force is a mess of bad management, poor employee communication and rotten promotion procedures that reward cronyism and sycophants while keeping good officers down.
“The system favours development of careerism, which members explain is a genuine plague that taints relations and decisions within the RCMP,” it states.
This careerism often interferes with sound police work, the report says: “It creates ‘individualists’ that invest in projects and initiatives not out of interest or for their intrinsic value, but simply to garnish their promotion file with ‘good examples.’ ”
The report cites officers who claimed that competition for promotion has destroyed the force’s teamwork by creating a system where everybody is out for his or her own career interests.
Quoting RCMP officers, it says the promotion procedure “fails dismally at ‘putting the right people in the right places.’ ”
Officers also told the report’s authors that RCMP managers turn a “blind eye to mediocre performance, incompetence and especially reprehensible actions when it suits them.”
The report claims that senior officers are not trained to handle disciplinary problems. They also cover up bad conduct to “preserve the image and reputation of the RCMP and avoid, at all costs, conflicts with members that could attract media attention,” it says. “From the members’ standpoint, ‘image policing’ weighs too heavily among management’s concerns.”
The RCMP said yesterday it could not comment on the report.
It was written by three professors at the Université de Montréal’s Research Group on Language, Organization and Governance.
The writers interviewed 668 Quebec-based RCMP employees, including managers, of whom 85 per cent were officers and the rest civilians. The interviews were voluntary and confidential, and were held between Sept. 21, 2007, and Aug. 29, 2008.
The RCMP commissioned the Quebec report as part of its effort to address
serious problems within the force that came to light over the mismanagement of its pension funds, as well as such operational tragedies as the 2005 murder of four officers in Alberta, and the RCMP killing with a Taser gun of newly arrived immigrant Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver International Airport in 2007.
The report confirms the findings of two earlier studies that indicated the national police force is in turmoil.
Both of the earlier reports – one called Rebuilding the Trust: Report of the Task Force on Governance and Cultural Change in the RCMP, the other a study by Dr. Linda Duxbury titled The RCMP Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: An Independent Report Concerning Workplace Issues at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – recommended a major overhaul of the Mounties.
The U de M writers said their report should give senior RCMP officers “additional reasons to take these diagnoses and the spirit of their respective recommendations very seriously.”
The authors found that the Mounties’ senior officers seem unaware of the gravity of the problems inside the force because they live in a different reality from that of the rank and file.
Officers claimed that the senior ranks treat the force as a business rather than a police force.
“They forgot that the essence of their work is to be police officers,” one officer told the authors.
The writers conclude: “Our observations clearly reveal that a large chasm separates – more gravely than we initially anticipated – the perspectives and realities of the members and managers in the C Division,” the Quebec division of the RCMP.
By George I think you’ve got it.
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The real problem is that way to many people are looking at themselves in the mirror and because everyone makes up their own standards today they come from their mirrors encouraged thinking all is well while some of them forget who they really are and what they were hired to do… they become no better than the bums on the streets looking for pity and hand outs when they get caught with their hands in the cookie jar…. sorry!
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So you obviously feel that the public complaints commission is not up to, nor doing an adequate job of overseeing the RCMP. Which would lead one to believe that you do not support the Brown report into the RCMP nor the government committee set up to implement changes and the numerous public officials charged with their implementation?
Someone held accountable? You forget this is the era of its ‘everybody’s fault but mine.’ From the criminal with the bad childhood to the lying politicians two stepping out of blunders. How did it get this way? Look in the mirror.
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Maybe the public and media cry for an independent people represented, not police represented review board to over see the structure, management and disciplin of problem areas of the RCMP is really the only way to assure Canadians, appart from the Complaints Commission that is, that someone somewhere in this crazy world we now live in will be held accountable for a change.
Of course that’s if they don’t hire their friends and it truly remains independent manned with good people.
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No Alcan, that is not the way it has always been. JohnnyG is spot on when he speaks of the attempted marriage of the two ideals. One of the biggest faults lie in the promotion system whereby ME is the the only person. Therefore you do not need anybody (read the team) to get the job done. Files are undertaken by how they will look on the promotion cycle.
The older system was actually not broken, but the 15% who could not get promoted whined enough to get things changed by spineless management types through the toothless DSRs.
Management used to be able to deal with these types, but now cannot due to the way the system operates. The cream o f the hard working, team playing investigators always rose to the top. Still does, but is not rewarded as in the past.
Now that its here, the elephant in the room has to be dealt with. Who shall step forward?
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This report could easily be reflective of all the Provinces in Canada and most likely because of the lack of transparacy much more serious in nature that the findings have discovered.
But they won’t fix it because it’s the way it’s always been, sorry!!!
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This is just the tip of the iceburg, what is described here plagues the whole organization.
New members are not taught team work anymore. Say what you want about the old military system, atleast it promoted that value. It also taught work ethic. The RCMP likes to hire ambitios people, but whenever you have a ambition without work ethic, a management that turns a blind eye to mobbing and harassment, you are bound to have the problems of “careerism” and the dirty politics that arises. Forget dropping people on a deserted island and calling the TV show “Survivor”, a TV crew should follow the internal workings of an RCMP unit and it would better demonstrate the dark side of human nature.
The RCMP tries to incorporate the military ways of the past with this new feel good politically correct way. Instead of getting the best of both world, it is the absolute worst of both worlds.
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