RCMP need new PR plan

Paul Walton (The Daily News) – The bad news just won’t stop for the RCMP.

The latest is that the Surrey RCMP raided the wrong apartment in November last year and violently arrested three Iranian immigrants. All three men suffered injuries, including dog bites.

I can defend the RCMP because what they do is vital if we are going to live in a civilized society, and because the work has challenges that none of us can understand without being police officers. Unfortunately, not only is that defence getting more and more difficult, but I am becoming alarmed by what is happening within Canada’s national police force.

Nanaimo has been no stranger to police misbehaviour, most of which can be put down to poor judgment and isolated incidents. But I have to say that I was concerned last week when I sat in on the trial for a man alleged to have been growing pot in a barn on Kilpatrick Road. To get to the point, a judge found “a high degree of carelessness” and “absence of good faith” as drug squad officers gathered information to obtain a warrant to get into the barn.

They included information that was unsubstantiated and did not include other information that might have meant that a justice of the peace could have refused to issue the warrant. The officer who wrote up the information was only doing what he thought was good police work. There was nothing malicious or negligent.

A good police officer was doing what he thought was a good job while not understanding essential and fundamental principles about the rights we have in Canada. The old Latin saying is “corruptio optimi pessima:” the corruption of the best is the worst. I use corruption in this context not in its pejorative meaning, inferring dishonesty or misconduct, but in reference to debasement or decline.

Looking at everything from Maher Arar to Robert Dziekanski, and even a barn on Kilpatrick Road, it is clear that the RCMP is not what it once was. While the great majority of officers continue to do good work, an old institution adapting to new ways is failing to maintain its core integrity. As the average age of the force has diminished drastically, many do not understand what lies behind the phrase “uphold what is right.”

An even greater problem is how the RCMP has become so focused on externals, almost obsessed with how it is portrayed to the public. They have a sophisticated media strategy that tries to prevent and control bad news, not to respond effectively to news events. It may be that such a strategy has created such a drive to appear as the good guys that things like warrants and rights have become secondary.

Note to the RCMP media masters: Officers don’t need to appear as good guys; they ARE the good guys. As long as the force admits its mistakes and makes amends that will not change. Perhaps its time to review a media strategy that implies the RCMP can do no wrong.

Time will fix the problems of eager and capable young officers who don’t understand things like what or what not to include in search warrant applications. As for a media strategy that only circles the wagons because that strategy is backfiring, that requires something more.

The RCMP must get out of the media business and return to the focus of upholding what is right. No organization is perfect, but we need to be wary of one that wants to portray itself as such. I’m not suggesting they abandon a media strategy, only that it must reflect its core value, not selling the RCMP as a force of light and goodness when it is a force to uphold the law.