Trial over death of Constable Douglas Scott throws spotlight on RCMP’s staffing practices in remote area

Adam McDowell (National Post) – A horrifying sight greeted Lloyd McDougall of Kimmirut, Nunavut, just before midnight on Nov. 5, 2007: Rookie Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Douglas Scott, slumped over the driver’s seat of his bloodied and broken-glass-ridden truck, a bullet wound through his head.

Const. Scott, just 20 years old and six months into the job as a Mountie, had responded alone to a domestic disturbance call in the remote, picturesque fly-in community formerly known as Lake Harbour, population roughly 425. Up Here magazine had called Kimmirut, on the rugged shore of Baffin Island, the “friendliest town in the North.”

He was one of just two officers in his detachment; the other was a temporary stand-in normally stationed in Prince Edward Island. Const. Scott’s death, which came just a month after that of an RCMP constable stationed in the Northwest Territories, prompted calls for the federal police force to question its staffing policies, including its practice of maintaining small detachments, often with just two or three officers, in remote parts of the country — where officers were believed to hesitate before calling for backup.

The trial of Pingoatuk Kolola, 39, for first-degree murder in connection with the shooting of Const. Scott began in Iqualuit yesterday. It is expected to take three weeks and involve 20 witnesses.

Reports yesterday said Mr. Kolola tried to plead guilty yesterday to manslaughter, but the Crown rejected it.

Lloyd McDougall, the hamlet of Kimmirut’s bylaw officer, told Canwest News Service in 2007 that he had heard from an eyewitness that Const. Scott did not defend himself from the gunman because, the alleged witness said, the man was holding a baby in his arms. Mr. Mc-Dougall said he had been told that the shooter climbed out of his truck with a child in one arm and a .30-06-calibre hunting rifle in the other. He fired into the passenger window of Const. Scott’s vehicle.

“The constable didn’t do anything to defend himself, because [the shooter] had his baby in his arms. Doug didn’t want to hurt the baby,” Mr. McDougall said.

The trouble had started about 10:30 p.m., when Mr. Kolola’s girlfriend arrived at Mr. McDougall’s door, frightened and crying. Mr. Kolola and his pregnant girlfriend, Oolitua Judea, lived with their nine-month old son in Tasilik, a small “subdivision” of new duplexes near the hockey arena on a hill overlooking the village.

Ms. Judea told the bylaw officer and his wife that Mr. Kolola was drunk and threatening her. Like many northern towns, Kimmirut is a dry community. Mr. McDougall said Mr. Kolola and his girlfriend were fighting over a bottle of vodka she had been hiding from him in their home.

At that moment, Mr. Kolola was searching for his girlfriend, tearing around the hamlet’s snowy roads and honking the horn of his blue Housing Association pickup, with his baby son on board. Two of his coworkers got dressed and gave chase in their trucks and snowmobiles, hoping to defuse the situation.

Before Mr. McDougall could join them, one of the co-workers burst into his house and said, “The cop’s been shot in the head.” That was when Mr. McDougall went to investigate, and saw Const. Scott’s body slumped in the driver’s side of his 4×4.

Just 30 days earlier, on Oct. 6, Const. Christopher Worden, 30, was killed in Hay River, N.W.T., while responding to a late-night call. He worked out of a nine-officer detachment. After his death, his wife, Julie Worden, called for the RCMP to stop sending single officers into dangerous situations.

In an interview with the CBC in November 2007, Ms. Worden said she believed her husband would still be alive if he wasn’t working alone the night he was shot.

“Things would have been different. I believe Chris would have been alive. If shots had been fired, the second officer would have been able to return fire,” she said. “There are so many different scenarios, but what it comes down to is, if there had been two members, it may not have even happened in the first place.”

Rank-and-file RCMP officers had been calling for changes for years.

Evidence emerged in late 2007 that Mounties had faced pressure not to call for assistance because senior officers were concerned about overtime pay racking up. In the month following Const. Scott’s death, an email surfaced that showed a local senior Mountie in Nunavut berating two officers for an overtime claim, stating that a person who is “drunk or in an ugly mood” does not justify calling for backup.

In November 2008, the RCMP responded with a new policy. The Mounties now require a “multiple response” in several situations, as follows: “calls of violence, or where violence is anticipated; domestic disputes; an occurrence involving the use, display or threatened use of a weapon; an occurrence involving a subject posing a threat to self or others; areas where communications are known to be deficient; any occurrence or situation where the member believes a multiple-member response is required based on his or her risk assessment.”

The RCMP has also reduced the number of two-and three-officer detachments, said a spokeswoman yesterday, citing figures that show a drop from 44 two-person RCMP posts in 2007 to 39 in late 2009. Three-person detachments have been reduced from 66 to 46.