RCMP Watch

Robert Remington (Calgary Herald - Editorial) - Among the many things taught to cadets at the RCMP training depot in Regina is risk assessment.

“As a police officer, your role in an intervention is to ensure that the public is safe,” reads one of the Mounties’ training manuals. It continues:

“Police safety is essential to public safety. If something happens to you, you will not be able to help others.”

And, when it comes to something as risky as a high-speed pursuit, the manual advises cadets to evaluate “the seriousness of the offence.”

On Wednesday, the RCMP initiated a pursuit on the QE2 near Red Deer in which an officer was seriously injured while placing a spike belt on the highway. The suspect, according to an RCMP press release, was throwing rocks at vehicles.

I’m not suggesting that throwing rocks at vehicles driving at high rates of speed on Alberta’s busiest highway isn’t serious, because it is. It can cause people to go out of control and create multiple collisions. People could die.

But one has to wonder if the RCMP pursuit policy has advanced much beyond the situation in 2000 when Shirley Heafey, chair of the RCMP public complaints commission, said this about RCMP high-speed pursuits: “Police officers and civilians are being killed and injured at an alarming rate every year in every province. This matter is urgent.”

At the time, only 2.8 per cent of suspects in high-speed pursuits were involved in serious violent offences, which remains the most up-to-date information available from the commission. “So, most people who flee have committed minor infractions or property thefts. They are running away because they’re panicked and scared,” Heafey said. “This must be addressed.”

Heafey cited Calgary’s HAWC helicopter as one means of keeping officers and the public safe in pursuit situations.

“Once the helicopter is on the scene of a vehicle pursuit, it is extremely difficult for offenders to avoid being caught,” she said. “The helicopter can engage in high-speed pursuits with little risk to officers or the public.”

Calgary’s police helicopter was introduced in 1995 following the death of city police Const. Rick Sonnenberg, who was killed in eerily similar circumstances to Wednesday’s incident. Sonnenberg, 27, was about to announce his engagement when he was killed while placing a spiked belt across Deerfoot Trail to stop a speeding stolen car.

The Alberta RCMP have one measly helicopter, based in Edmonton, to cover the entire province. There’s no way it could have been dispatched to Red Deer on short notice Wednesday to pursue a person throwing rocks.

According to Heafey, many of the people who flee are young, inexperienced drivers who panic when directed to pull over by police. She cited the case of a 15-year-old who stole a car in Surrey, B.C., in July 1999 and crashed into a family in another vehicle, killing 11-year-old Tina Burbank.

The RCMP, who are notorious for their reluctance to release basic information, were not releasing the age of the suspect in Wednesday’s case.

Tina Burbank’s, mother, Chrissy Burbank, recently called for an end to police pursuits except in the most serious cases.

“I would say stop all police pursuits unless a serious criminal act is being done, or unless a child is being abducted and is in that car,” Burbank said in March following another high-speed chase involving the RCMP and police in New Westminster, B.C. that left an innocent driver critically injured.

There may be more to Wednesday’s incident than we know. The RCMP release says the suspect was also jumping into traffic. Yet, from the little we know, it looks like a dangerous response not in keeping with the RCMP’s risk assessment model, known as CAPRA, which advises: “This assessment should include both how likely it is that someone or something might be hurt or damaged and how or whether the police officer should intervene given the seriousness of the harm or damage that might be caused.”

In 1989, RCMP in Didsbury came under fire for a highly publicized high-speed chase that ended with four people dead after police chased 17-year-old Kelly Simm, who died in a collision along with three occupants in another vehicle, all from Fort St. John, B.C.

The families of the Fort St. John victims dropped a lawsuit against the Mounties, but remained critical of police, arguing RCMP should have a chase policy similar to the one that exists in Calgary, where pursuits are forbidden for trivial offences.

After Wednesday, perhaps the RCMP will finally listen, given that one of their own was almost killed. And, maybe the law-and-order-friendly Harper government will provide a chopper or two for one of Canada’s busiest highways.