Jumping Ship….

Posted on by Pete Cross

If you have been keeping track you may have noted that some significant officers of the Executive rank of the RCMP have decided that now is a good time to get out of Dodge. Maybe most noteworthy is Kevin Brosseau the Deputy Commissioner, who was in the running for the Commissioners job; and a couple of months ago another Deputy Commissioner, Joanne Crampton, announced her retirement. She too had been in the running for the job of Commissioner. So both have announced their departure after they were jumped over in terms of rank, by the eventual winner of the Commissioner sweepstakes by Goodale friend Ms. Lucki. In Ottawa, where the Peter Principle seems to run freely and where nepotism is of second nature, one would have to assume that both saw the writing on the wall, that the ultimate brass ring was now officially out of reach.

Meanwhile, out on the West Coast, another darling of the political identity movement, Deputy Commissioner Brenda Butterworth-Carr has also announced her retirement as head of E Divsion. She too was rumoured to be in the running for the Commissioners job and according to some reports was in effect the front runner. Many speculated that the person who was once trumpeted by the Vancouver Sun as a “trail-blazing First Nations leader” saw the grass growing greener on the other side of the political fence, time to put the resume to monetary use.

It is not unusual of course for people to depart, especially when most have a furtive eye on lucrative second jobs, and ex Mounties seem to have a knack for not wanting to retire, and often have ambitions of joining Canada’s 10% economic elite.

To accomplish this they seem to have developed the ability, like “Bumblebee”, to morph into jobs where their lack of expertise does not hinder their aspirations. There are many examples, such as Bill Blair who mysteriously found a new calling in the marihuana industry as a preamble to launching a political career with the Liberals; Julian Fantino, former Chief of the Toronto Police Service who once called the legalizing of marihuana equivalent to the legalizing of murder; and a former West Vancouver Police Chief, the illustrious Kash Heed, who never saw a camera he didn’t like, or a podium he didn’t want to stand on, has also been advising the marihuana industry for years.

Ms. Butterworth-Carr not letting any grass grow under her feet, has joined the ranks of the disaffected and announced her new 2nd job as the incoming Deputy Minister and Director of Police Services for the Province in Victoria; replacing Clayton Pecknold. Needless to say, she has raised a few eyebrows, and concerns about this possible conflict of interest.

Ms Butterworth-Carr was not in her current role as the titular head of the RCMP in British Columbia very long, only have taken the job with great fanfare in March 2017. So she has been in her current top post for two years, maybe long enough to get a cup of coffee at the in-house Green Timbers Tim Hortons, but clearly not enough time to undertake any initiatives of significance.

Her CV is replete with First Nations references and the requisite buzz phrases: “strategic planning” “coaching” “mentoring” and the always suspect assignments of community policing, employee safety and crime prevention. It is therefore fair to question her qualifications for the job as deputy minister where she will be “superintending” policing in the Province, “establishing Provincial Policy standards” and “inspecting and reporting on the quality of police services”, amongst and including the municipal police agencies.

Between her anticipated pension and her new salary, an educated guess will put her pension and salary income over $300,000.00. Clearly she will be joining the select few with a combined salary as much as the Chief of Vancouver City Police and far in excess of any other police chief in the Lower Mainland.

But qualifications and exorbitant compensation aside, what is more curious is both the timing and obvious conflict of interest in this appointment.

During her brief tenure, she saw the City of Surrey vote to pronounce that they are going to go to a Municipal force, a major move which must have sent some shock waves even to the often seemingly disconnected Ottawa RCMP establishment.

As Professor Rob Gordon of Simon Fraser University has said this move by Butterworth-Carr has left him “astounded by the bravado with which they have gone ahead and done this”. What he is referencing is that the City of Surrey must submit a plan to the Province to leave the RCMP, which will need the approval of Mike Farnworth the current Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General. An advisor to this application will be none other than Butterworth-Carr in her new role, the former RCMP spokesperson and defender of the Surrey RCMP.

To be fair, Butterworth-Carr has never said she disagreed with the people of Surrey a possible indication that she is at least politically savvy enough to avoid the obvious pitfalls. However, since the election in Surrey, she has clearly been directed or taken her own initiative to show and demonstrate how the RCMP, in her opinion is doing an exemplary job in Surrey.

There was evidence of this public defence during a bizarre interview with Global news.  She along with Assistant Commissioner Eric Stubbs and Assistant Commissioner Kevin Hackett presented themselves saying they wanted to speak to the Forces “successes and challenges”. So on December 17, 2018 the three sat, looking uncomfortable, to clearly try and curtail the buzz over the election in Surrey and all the negative news which has been circling the RCMP over the last several months.

They clearly were not prepared despite this interview being by their request. When asked what were the big successes in 2018 Ms. Butterworth-Carr pointed to the “technological advancement” of the RCMP; that they were “piloting digital evidence” and “advancing interactions with Crown”.

If that wasn’t head scratching enough, they promised they were going to be more “tenacious with the social media environment” and they were going to “get out in front of news stories”. They said that the RCMP needs a “progressive culture” and that they were working at improving the “workplace culture”.

Of course the Global news anchor recognizes government nonsense patter when she hears it, so she then asked about the Lemaitre inquiry. Ms. Butterworth-Carr said that she was not in “a position to respond to that”. There was no follow up question, so it was never asked why the head of the RCMP for the entire Province would not be in a position to respond to this issue. The RCMP have been perfecting for many years the old dodge and hide but this defied normal logic.

When asked about the Surrey election and the move to go to a municipal police force she said that it would be up to her Federal and Political masters (she of course did not mention that she was heading over to be one of the politicos -a fact that at the time of the interview must have been known to her)

She did say that the RCMP is “delivering an exceptional service”, which she also had mirrored in an internal memo to her RCMP brothers and sisters saying that there had been “great work done by the RCMP”.

Near the end of the interview, as if he had been jabbed under the table, Mr. Hackett then jumped in to this fragmented interview, with the observation that in travelling the Province with Mr. Stubbs they had noted that there was a lot of “positivity out there”.

So there you have it, the three top Mounties in the Province and their take on the current political and criminal climate in British Columbia. Is there any wonder this group is in trouble or that Ms. Butterworth-Carr is bailing out? With their promises to meet with Crown more often and maybe sending their files in PDF rather than on discs, the RCMP officers watching this display must have felt positively giddy about the future.

It was a glaring example of the total lack of leadership in the RCMP. From top to bottom there is a shortage of principled, dynamic, and informed leadership. Maintaining the status quo, doing the same thing over and over again and but expecting different results and expecting the general membership to fall in line, is in fact the sign of insanity,

The system is such that the commissioned officers of the RCMP need to comply with and be part of an accepted creed of conformity to government and political needs, and they literally spend hundreds of hours playing the system, learning the new terminologies, and gaming the new political identities.

But just once, you would hope that someone arrives at a higher level, with some vision of the future, with some solutions to the pressing problems, and with some ability to communicate that vision. Just once, you would like to see some of them stay around long enough to enact that commitment. Just once, you would like to see someone turn down the rolls of money being wafted tantalizingly under their noses because of their inflated sometimes conjured resumes, and instead hang around long enough to have some success.

This group needs to spend less time on LinkedIn, more time on honesty and integrity, and less time echoing their political masters. In the wise words of Sir Winston Churchill, “kites rise highest against the wind, not with it”.

Leaders become leaders when they step forward and only when they are accepted by their followers. The RCMP is in desperate need of a leader unencumbered or enamoured by trappings or future benefits.

In terms of Ms. Butterworth-Carr and the announcement of her new job, the management of the RCMP and the NDP lead government will likely put on their blinders once again ignoring the obvious conflict and maybe a little jealous of her financial windfall. The police rank and file will resignedly shrug their shoulders, give a ‘told you so’ smirk, and carry on, as there is no other choice.

Potter Stewart, a former associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court said, that “ethics is the difference between what you have the right to do, and what is right to do”. Sadly, there seems to be no one in the upper echelons of the RCMP or in the current B.C. government that seems to understand that distinction.

Photo Courtesy of DVIDSHUB via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved

Want to be a Terrorist? Call the RCMP help line..

Posted on by Pete Cross

In the last couple of months, the RCMP and its multiple investigative arms have been dealt several kicks to its institutional gut. They have had three major cases stayed in the last couple of months; one involved money laundering, another drug smuggling, and the third was a case of domestic terrorism. They say time heals and thanks to our speedy court system, all of these cases have had some years pass, making us forget the RCMP management bouquets of self-congratulations and the blowing of trumpets at the time of the original arrests. All three of these cases deserve scrutiny and demand some explanations, however the novelty of the terrorist case may be the most interesting and the most concerning.

The RCMP foray into the case of domestic terrorism involved the two now infamous “targets”; John Nuttall and Amanda Korody. A startled public expressed shock and consternation, as for some reason most Canadians still believe they are immune to this kind of thing, while the media tried to outdo each other with terrorism hyperbole.

A trial and the appeal courts five years later however found something quite different. After the initial trial the presiding judge basically overruled the jury, and announced that the two had been entrapped and entered a stay of proceedings on all charges. A couple of more years later, the Appeals court agreed with Judge Catherine Bruce, that this was a “clear case of police manufactured crime…”. That the police “did not disrupt an ongoing criminal plan” as had been advertised, in fact the police conduct of this file was a “travesty of justice”. Harsh words, even for a court system which is never reluctant to put the police on trial.

It is too easy to just say that the police “screwed up” in this incidence. One needs to dig down, sift through some layers of bureaucracy and investigational mandates, to begin to understand where this case went wrong and to begin to understand who should be accountable.

One has to start with the “targets”. Who were these terrorists, Nuttall and Korody? Well, their most notable feature may be the fact that they were two heroine addicts on the methadone program; they did not have their own residence living with Nuttall’s grandmother in a basement suite. They were on financial assistance, spent hours watching endless videos, and, rarely left the house. But somewhere in this sad, desperate, and often mindless existence, Mr Nuttall and Ms Korody decided to convert to Islam. Why? That will be left to the psychiatrists, but in hindsight their religion choice was probably the most significant factor. They likely would have gone unnoticed if they had turned to a different God.

It was 2013, the year of the Boston Marathon bombing by the Tsarnaev brothers. Islamic terrorism around the world was front and centre, both in the news and in the minds of the Ottawa Federal authorities. It would be a year later when a lone gunmen known in B.C. circles as “Muslim Mike” would attack the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. The political climate and the police were on edge. And it was the beginning of this mis-guided investigation.

There was a political environment fermenting in Ottawa, bubbling over with a need to thwart any budding terrorism. A need for the RCMP to prove itself to the world of our contribution to the righteous fight against terrorism. Instead, this investigation would turn out to be a shining example of institutional investigational “tunnel vision”, susceptible to over reaction and seeing ghosts where none existed.

It is also a story of how once the police machine is grinding along it is very difficult to reverse or stop the process, often rolling over any contrary narrative, or any human rights in the process. It is a difficult to explain, a mindset of how everything undertaken must be a success, there was no other option.

Compounding this clouded vision was a lack of supervision, a lack of understanding of the law, and two factions in the RCMP who were at odds with each other on how to proceed.

Clearly he was a violent person, but there are many of them that come across the police blotter, so what made him different than the others. How did this common criminal step over the threshold into terrorism?

In July 2012, the first mention of Nuttall showing some signs of his new prescription for life occurred when a female accidentally overheard a conversation on the street. Mr. Nuttall was on a cellphone, talking or yelling, about “blowing up” Islamic countries and making references to the “afterlife”. The female contacted the police, who attended and spoke with her to verify what she heard. When they spoke with her they noted that she was intoxicated.

A few months later another individual, who the courts call M.C. met Mr. Nuttall at a mosque. The recently converted Nuttall spoke of having killed a Jewish woman (which was later determined to be false); and he wanted help travelling to Afghanistan to take part in a violent jihad. Mr Nuttall was banned from several mosques because of his aberrant behaviour and the individual M.C. expressed concern for Nuttall’s mental health.

There should be no doubt that Nuttall was violent: convictions for robbery, kidnapping, aggravated assault and at least two incidents of domestic violence against his girlfriend/spouse Amanda Korody. All the files referred to his mental instability and behavioural issues.

In normal times, under normal circumstances, Mr Nuttall would have continued to be a proverbial flag in police computers a notation on his police file should he pop up in terms of any investigation or complaint. He seemed more of a subject for the Mental Health Act, seeming to always exhibit behaviour consistent with mental instability. In this case, if he was indeed a wannabe terrorist, he had no problem announcing to the world or anyone that would listen, that he was one, or at least wanted to become one.

An overheard phone call by itself does not warrant too much further action, but then along comes the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), who sends a letter to the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) stating that Nuttall was a “potential threat to national security”. It was a “tip”, there was no source of the information given, and there were no actionable details.

A couple of months after this, CSIS sends another letter, updating their information to INSET; upping the ante as it were, now declaring that Nuttall had tried to purchase or had bought potassium nitrate. A chemical that can be used in the creation of explosives. This report too was unconfirmed at the time and in the end never corroborated.

So armed with this rather limited and unbacked information, INSET launches into an investigation. They conduct surveillance on Nuttall and Korody, and quickly learn that they are quite boring, never leave the house, and appear to have no life outside the walls of their house.

Yet, despite the negative findings, and despite it being uncorroborated information, this investigative group decides somewhat surprisingly that they will enter into an expensive undercover investigation, a technique usually used when in possession of much harder information. No terrorist activities had been uncovered, they had little more than one individual, Mr Nuttall, who may have been qualified for examination under the mental health act to justify this next step.

There was no evidence that Mr Nuttall was involved with a terrorist group, but to give the benefit of doubt, the police in this instance presumably must have felt there was enough there to warrant some form of “infiltration”.

There were three investigational groups that became directly involved. The respective mandates and the nuanced differences was where this file left them susceptible to mistakes.

CSIS is an intelligence agency that deals only in intelligence, it does not go to court, its investigations do not face scrutiny or examination in any public forum. It does not want to be exposed to any public light, out of necessity they argue.

CSIS was formed in the early 1980’s when the MacDonald Commission took Security Service away from the RCMP and formed this alternate agency (the primary reason, ironically considering this case, being that the Commission felt that the RCMP lacked the political sophistication to investigate groups such as the FLQ at the time).

The effectiveness of CSIS and its contributions to our national security, are up for conjecture and debate, as no one is fully versed on what they are doing; short of the cabinet committee on security and intelligence. Therefore, the public will likely remain in the dark, now and into the future. It can be argued that there is an investigational necessity to secrecy in the world of intelligence, but the fact that there never will be a shining light on their operational effectiveness, also makes for a convenient and easy hiding place, and is fully reliant on the public trust of Ottawa and its politicians.

With this mandate and with this structure at CSIS, when they receive or are exposed to information which is of a criminal nature, they are mandate bound to turn it over to the police for further investigation, which in this case is INSET. When CSIS makes the decision to turn over this or any criminal information, in some ways their interest in the case fades, as does their willingness and ability to cooperate.

INSET is the Federally directed group within the RCMP, with sections in the various Provinces including British Columbia. For a number of years it has been an innocuous group, hardly heard from, with a reputation of a good place to spend your retirement years, a sleepy hollow, an arm who often liked to hide behind the nomenclature of “national security” if ever questioned. As a result INSET is rarely heard or seen in the public eye.

However, over the last few years it has enjoyed a renewal, brought on by greater Ottawa Federal interest, a large increase in their manpower resources and budget, and this section began to catch the eye of Major Crime investigators who wanted a little quieter lifestyle. As an example, two of the three INSET investigators who formed the investigative group in this Nuttall case came from Major Crime backgrounds. One other thing should be noted and may be a key to understanding what went wrong, is that these major crime investigators brought with them some major crime investigative techniques; which often included undercover operations. That was their experience, it was part of their toolbox.

The third group of significance who may have played the most significant role in this investigation was the “Undercover Shop”. A relatively small section, which developed about 30 years ago. It was a group specifically designed to get close to the criminal element by being one of them, becoming entrusted by them, with the ultimate goal of obtaining confessions or uncovering criminal ties. It enjoys a somewhat misplaced allure not often found in other investigational teams.

As the years have moved on they have become more exposed through the courts, the techniques often on full display, the methods studied in criminology courses. They even talk about it on their own public website. If you were listening to talk radio today you would have heard their techniques being the subject of talk radio. Any technique that is exposed to such a great degree, is less effective and possibly dangerous.

Over they years the Undercover Unit developed tried and true “scenarios”; staged one act plays with police officers pretending to be part of the criminal element, designed to further their credibility with the target; all hopefully leading to a point where the target fills the need to inform “Mr. Big” about his previous criminality. Ultimately the target wants to please, to gain approval of the actor playing Mr. Big and the acceptance and protection of the fake criminal group. In some cases, these scenarios drag on, and there can be over over fifty such “scenarios” or more, but in this Nuttall case, there were only twenty-eight, which may also be a flag of either wanting the file to end, or one borne of a hurried desperation to reach the goal.

In the late 1990’s the U.C. unit became heavily involved with Major Crime teams and began to deal almost exclusively with homicide cases. since 2008 they have been involved in some 350 cases in which 95% have resulted in conviction.) These were cases where murders had been committed, the suspect had been identified by major crime investigators, and the goal of the undercover operation was to get a “confession” to the crime, often to corroborate and verify the circumstantial evidence in the case. It was an important role to play, but it was not up to this group to conduct the investigation.

The Undercover Unit’s exposure in the courts over the last ten years has led many investigators, lawyers, and academics to question whether their techniques are becoming fragile; that these techniques only work on the feeble minded, the un-connected, the neophytes of the criminal world. The unit was becoming less successful with more exposure, and several times have been called out by their “targets” as being the police. They do not talk about the cases that went wrong, nor should you ever hear about them, at least in theory.

So these two factions came together, INSET and the U.C. group, no doubt with the approval of upper management in both B.C. and in Ottawa and a decision was made that an undercover operation would be undertaken. Even though there had been no offence committed, by Nuttall or Korody, and maybe just as notable even though there was no confession being sought. This was by its very design somewhat of a fishing trip, characteristic in some ways of any “infiltration”.

The U.C. group was about to undertake an operation with no goal other than the infiltration of these two abhorrent but sad individuals, but began using a technique that was geared to obtaining specific results, a confession, a “Mr. Big”. The nature of the scenarios were a combination of a need to infiltrate, but they also began using techniques aimed at ending at a Mr. Big. This seems somewhat counter-intuitive from any investigators standpoint and could lead to confusion in the goals if nothing else. How does one aim for a confession if there is no crime? The very setup and the road they were going down was pre-destined to lead to claims of entrapment. They needed to create the crime and push the two targets toward it, the building blocks to an argument of being entrapped.

One should also point out that these types of operations can easily get into the millions of dollars in terms of cost, but there was no municipal or provincial budget oversight–INSET and the U.C. group were playing with Federal monies. (It is interesting to note that with this new found interest in terrorist files in Ottawa, INSET’s budget went from $717,000 in 2003 and in 2013, the year of this case, it was at $22.9 million.)

So the Undercover Operation began. The “hook” or “bump” into Nuttall by the undercover operators was tried and true, the old “would you help me look for my sister” line to act as a public introduction. Nuttall fell hook line and sinker, which in some ways should also have been a red flag, a warning signal as to Nuttall’s mental capacity and competence. He eventually became so enamoured with the operator that he even declared his love for him.

Without going into all the scenarios that were employed, suffice to say that Nuttall throughout: talked of extravagant plans, made ridiculous demands, was unable to focus, could not carry out the simplest of tasks. He went from wanting to kill civilians, to wanting to kill soldiers, from wanting to blow up a nuclear submarine, to blowing up a passenger ferry but not wanting to kill children or innocents. He wanted to blow up the “train” to Victoria, so was quite disappointed to find there was no train that went to Victoria.

He went from wanting to build rockets, and getting access to sniper rifles, to eventually settling for the building of pressure cooker bombs just like the Boston bombers. This more controllable goal was pushed at the suggestion and direction of the Undercover group.

The U.C. “shop” continued to focus on getting Nuttall to write down his plans, no doubt believing that it would be corroboration of his intent and capabilities. Nuttall claimed to have those plans on his laptop, then discovered to not having plans, to being asked to write down plans, and then not being able to physically complete them.

His goals went from freeing Omar Khadr, to forcing the American army out of Afghanistan, to having all the prisoners released from Guantanamo. He was “in training” when he was playing “paintball”. His goals, dreams, needs and plans changed daily. He could not carry out a common grocery list even when directed by the UC operator.

So it was borne out of necessity that the Undercover group began to direct him. (It should be noted that the primary undercover operator despite all of the above, testified that he did not believe that Nuttall was “incapable”).

Once the police begin to direct, all the police personnel involved should have been aware that they were no longer toying with “entrapment” they were now within its grasp. And as early as May 2013 some opinion inside the U.C. shop began to talk about the fact that they were exerting too much influence through the primary undercover operator. One of the investigative team Sargents argued that Nuttall and Korody did not represent a “risk”. Sources say that this Sargent ended up leaving the investigative team, turning over the running of the file to someone with more intensity to push this file.

So it carried on, with Nuttall carrying on his delusional path. At one point he even breaks down crying because he can not write out a plan as he had been directed. He fears the wrath of the undercover operator because he couldn’t do what he was told, even on one occaisson bringing a “marble gun” for protection. After finally settling with a plan, albeit unwritten, to blow up the Parliament buildings in Victoria.

Nuttall insists on videotaping a “recce” to check out the target area discreetly. He is promptly seen talking to police, tourist guides, and using his own name, clearly not having learned the lesson that he should be somewhat covert.

Nuttall emerges from this mayhem, with an agreement with the undercover team to build pressure cooker bombs, just like the Boston brothers. The undercover team manages to control this process, to the point that they were able to make them inert and give them back to Nuttall, so they could be buried in the bushes outside the Victoria Legislature buildings. (They also forget to get the appropriate warrant to give the “bombs” back to Nuttall with a minute trace of C4 and the courts pointed out that the RCMP had in fact broken the law)

Nuttall gets cold feet as the moment nears, to the point of asking for a “spiritual advisor”, and refers to dying like a “martyr”. Graciously, he says he would bequeath his paint gun to the undercover operator for future training purposes.

In the end of this farcical operation, they are allowed to bury the bombs in the “bushes”, and then went and sat in a hotel room waiting for the news to report their feat. Of course, they were bitterly disappointed when the news did not erupt.

With little trouble they were then arrested.

Equally surprising in this tale of misdeeds is that at the end of it all, the police managed to convince the Crown to lay charges.

And then, after the stay of proceedings placed by the trial Judge, The Crown had the audacity to appeal it, spending more tax dollars on clearly a fruitless mission. The Crown, argued in its appeal, that the two suspects were “completely responsible for crafting and carrying out the plan…and the RCMP operation was not manipulative”. It must have been hard keeping a straight face in their applications. There may have been mistakes made by the trial Judge in terms of some of the more legal issues, but no one could possibly argue that this was not entrapment.

The trial judge, Justice Catherine Bruce rightly said that the undercover operator “actually propelled Nuttall to a more extreme view”. She said the RCMP “instigated and skillfully engineered the very terrorist act committed by the defendants”. The RCMP “induced the commission of an offence..without reasonable suspicion or while acting mala fides”. One can forgive the odd Mountie from not understanding “entrapment”, but how do a group of lawyers not understand it.

So where does this leave us. After millions of dollars spent in lawyers and police operations and the errors in judgement will there be repercussions? Obviously not, this is government, this is the infallible RCMP, after all they are not holding anyone responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in sexual harassment claims.

It should raise questions, not just confined to the individual officers, but to the upper echelons, the supervisors who read and approved of these actions. We have a multi-layered and dysfunctional RCMP in terms of investigational mandates and recognition as to what constitutes a security threat. Sources are telling me that there is another three year long operation, which has also fallen under the same spell as Nuttall. That is trying to find suspects where none exist.

All of this is amplified by an Ottawa which has a severe disconnect with those officers on the ground who are conducting the investigations.

Miscommunication and understanding was compounded by a dogmatic and unbendable and unimaginative Undercover group who continue to use outdated techniques, not being able to recognize that the circumstances should not have been addressed by another “Mr Big”.

It was hurt by an intransigent investigative team, who seemed incapable of understanding entrapment, who just let the machine grind forward. One does not believe for a minute that the officers involved were ill-intentioned. They were struggling inside some vague criminal laws, were lacking sound guidance from Crown along the way and needed a fuller appreciation of the level of sophistication needed to prove an act of terrorism.

There is a monumental lack of understanding that a terrorist act is a political act. There is a 120 year old saying that “One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter”. Nuttall and Korody were neither.

Was Mr. Nuttall and Ms Korody dangerous individuals? To be sure. There are lots of dangerous people out there, just read Twitter.

There is a layered dysfunction in the RCMP. It is an organization consumed by gender and identity politics while a tornado of police needs and demands circle. Always trying to be the one fits all agency, all things to everyone. Doing everything, but not anything well. Whether it be white collar crime, child or internet crime, it never admits its failure, nor do they admit that they have been pulled in every direction while the government ignores or exacerbates chronic manpower and resource issues. They have grown or have been stretched too far, now too big to succeed. Only strong leadership and an honest appraisal of the capabilities and needs of this organization will pull it out of this flat spin.

*All the quotes in this story can be found from the judgement itself listed here:  2018 BCCA 479.

**Also, in terms of full disclosure, the author has had experience in major crime cases, and specifically in major crime cases, where an undercover operation which used the Mr. Big was employed. Some were successful, some were not. The author also was a member of Security Service which then became CSIS.

Photo courtesy of Google Pics- Some Rights Reserved

A Christmas at the end of the road…

Posted on by Pete Cross

As the late admired journalist David Carr said when asked about his journey from crack cocaine addict to NY Times reporter, he explained that indeed he had led a “textured life”. It resonated with me, in that my life has not been a straight line, maybe not even a crooked or jagged line. There has been no A to B followed by C; no real planning, no career to wife, house, children and the apparent ultimate goal of mortgage free retirement.  

It was just one of these unconventional, somewhat twisted career moves that led me to an isolated rain soaked valley, one which literally sat at the “end of the road”.  Comfortably nestled in isolation, pushed up amongst the coastal mountains lies the village of Bella Coola, my third posting in what was then a still young career. I was going there from living and working in downtown Toronto; within 48 hours transitioning from a surveillance assignment on Yonge St., only to find myself standing in front of the nondescript police detachment on MacKenzie St. in Bella Coola, British Columbia.

If you should choose to drive there, turn directly west on Hwy 20 from Williams Lake and begin your drive, across the sparse Chilcotin plateau, periodic marshy lakes interrupted by seemingly never ending patches of cedar and spruce. You will gradually enter a new, sometimes forgotten world, winding through sparsely settled Alexis Creek, Riske Creek, and Anahim Lake. A still wild land, untouched, ignored for the most part by the rest of the Province.

After 4 or 5 hours, the Coastal Mountains begin to frame the horizon and you think that you must be near the end when the asphalt abruptly turns to dirt. Most are usually not prepared for this final phase, one where you begin to descend into the Valley. You are now on the “Hill”. 

This “Hill” (in any other place it is a Mountain) is a sometimes one-lane dirt road, descending 4020′ over 19 kms, with road grades of 15-18%, nicknamed, inadvertently tongue in cheek, as the “Freedom Road”. Denied government funding local citizens in 1952 took it upon themselves to complete this highway connection, one that government engineers said was impossible. Stubbornly, armed with brashness and bulldozers these rugged individuals pushed it through on their own and “freedom” and access was gained to the rest of the world, or at least that small part of the world which allowed an exit from their isolation.   

So it was that in 1984, I found myself standing in front of the brick, flat-roofed square detachment, a townsite surrounded on three sides by mountains, the sides of the valley about a mile away. Cloud cover, I learned was never far away, often hovering at 1000 feet. A box designed by nature, unable to see too far up, or too far to the sides. The rain feeds the dense forest, its foliage of hanging mosses and green carpeted limbs make it almost impenetrable.

Tourism now seems to be supplanting the days of logging and commercial fishing which were the original economic engines, and Norwegian settlers from Minnesota, began living side by side with the Nuxalk First Nation.

The centre of town, is about 300 yards long, with the central road dividing the Reserve from the “white” side. There is a Co-op grocery store, Kopas’ General Store, and the hotel restaurant which was then the Cedar Inn.

The Reserve is three or four rows of sub-standard housing, ill-fitting doors, a variety of window coverings, from flags to plastic bags. Dogs running in groups, lazily stirring in driveways or yards if provoked.

Few are making a living “off the land”, struggling teenagers fully aware of life on the outside, consumed much like their city counter parts with all that is playing on large screen t.v.’s. Everything that they want achingly out of reach.

There are no jobs to speak of, generations of welfare and isolation further further quelling any chance or desire for economic freedom; other than the usual small town government employment. In re-visiting a couple of years ago, depressingly, nothing has changed, although the police now live in a rather large conspicuous yellow modern styled building. An ignoble and incongruous bus shelter, now sits on the main drag, and appears to be the only other new addition in 30 years.

It was here my two year “isolated post” began.

And It was here, in these surroundings, that I found myself that first Xmas Day in 1984. Alone for the holidays as the other three officers like most of the residents of Bella Coola, had left town for the holidays. Besides being the only cop in town, the only breathalyzer operator, the sworn in sheriff for civil action, I was the holder of the keys for the local garage should a tourist run out of gas during the holidays. 

The rain pelted down, bouncing off the pavement, and as I looked out the front detachment window, there was not a sole in sight, not even a passing vehicle. Clearly, those that were around, were now content to surround themselves with family in their respective houses as it neared Xmas dinner hour. It was getting dark at 2 in the afternoon and the sides of the valley had already begun to close in. I stood there in my ball cap, uniform shirt, and jeans held up by a holster pondering how to pass the time. 

A Xmas tree, which I had proudly felled myself days before, was laying on the back porch, yet to be brought into the house. There seemed to be no point in bringing it in, especially when I had just discovered that there were no decorations to speak of anyway. With the greenish shag carpet in the living room, and no decorations, it would have looked ridiculously more like a tree having grown up through the floor. It stayed on the porch.

Xmas dinner had not been planned for either, the local restaurant was closed, the only day in the year which received this honour. Not wanting to be alone with thoughts of Xmas’s from the past, I decided that I would take a patrol of the townsite and the area further up the Valley; more out of boredom than diligence. I backed the police car out of the carport, put on the defogger and the windshield wipers on full force and began the usual rounds.

A few lights shone in the houses on the Reserve, but the rest of the town site had become ghostly, little signs of life, the odd and sparse string of Xmas lights blinking at the Co-op and the Liquor Store entrance ways, their closed signs stating the obvious hanging in the doorways. I decided to head up the highway, up towards Hagensborg.

Hagensborg is just a small collection of houses, a small convenience store, a bar and a faded yellow clapboarded bowling alley.

As I drove slowly by, I could clearly see a light on in the bowling alley, near the front of the building, which served as the coffee shop and catered to the bowlers. I couldn’t be sure but this seemed out of the norm having driven by on the single road highway many times. It had been vacant in previous years, but I had heard that some people had recently bought it, and trying to make a go of it. The rumour was that a “homosexual” couple were escaping Vancouver and the burgeoning AIDS epidemic, escaping to nature, escaping to where the disease would not find them. Why else would someone who was “homosexual” move to Bella Coola, at least that was the local scuttle butt. Bored, and having lots of time on my hands, I thought I should rattle the door handles, just to make sure it was ok.

The rain was incessant, stinging the bridge of my nose, as I climbed out of the security of the police car, and went up to shake the front door, not really expecting an answer.

The door suddenly opened and a middle aged man, with a slight paunch, dressed in khakis and a flannel shirt framed the doorway. “Hello officer” and I was hit with the smell of roasting food and the warmth of the insides flowing out. “Hey, come on in, come in” gesturing and opening the door further.

A couple of steps in as I was muttering something about not wanting to disturb them, that a second man appeared coming out from deeper inside the cafe. A similar aged man, a dress shirt over jeans, short perfectly groomed hair, smiling broadly, and with a pair of clearly used oven mitts on both hands.

I began to explain again that I was checking on the property, when I felt myself being swept up by the effusiveness of the two. Without waiting for an answer, they told me to have a chair, directing me by the arm, to have some dinner with them. “After all…” they had cooked a goose and had more than enough to go around, the deliciously browned bird sitting prominently on the counter, proof of their apparent predicament and the need for company. They both talked at the same time, resisting seemed futile, despite my “not wanting to impose”.

So I sat as minutes became hours, and I listened. They talked about their previous life in the city, why they came to Bella Coola, what they loved about the place, what they hated, their backgrounds, the bowling alley being a dream of owning their own business, Xmas, and plans for New Years. Their voices seemed as one, and as I sat, I was enveloped and drawn into their kindness. It was an atmosphere usually reserved for long friendships.

I ate sweet dark goose meat, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, vegetables, sitting near the picture glass window, the heat inside causing condensation to form on the single large window, the rain noisily pelting the glass, the abandoned dark bowling lanes off to my left, the police car once in a while shimmering in the flickering light a few yards away in the darkened outside world. How did I get here, how did I come to be sitting in this pinpoint of light and time, at the end of the road, eating what I remember as one of the best meals I had ever eaten, eating with two people who were strangers 30 minutes before. One of those jagged turns in the road.

And 34 years later, I still remember those two gentlemen. I don’t remember their names, but I remember them. I picture the scene that night as if it were yesterday.

They didn’t last long in Bella Coola, maybe another year or two, and then they were gone like they came in; without a word or anyone expressing surprise that they had left.

Every Xmas I think of them, who are probably in their 80’s by now. I do hope and believe that they survived. I picture them sitting down for another Xmas dinner, happily reminiscing about the year or two they spent in Bella Coola; remembering the year they had that “young” Mountie in for Xmas dinner, the Mountie who had taken the time to check on them.

Merry Xmas and a Safe New Year to you all, and thanks for reading.

Photo courtesy of Google Pics…an actual picture of the Hill..some Rights Reserved.

The Politics of “First Responders”

Posted on by Pete Cross

In March 2017, there was a blog on this site which posed the question as to whether it was time to cut back on Fire Services, who despite a diminishing need for their services,  were in fact expanding in terms of manpower, equipment, and general presence.

The self-justifications for the fire services expansion all hinged on their incursion into medical calls, fanned by the publicity burning opioid crisis. It was the continuing perpetuation of the somewhat mythical life saver dynamic, they being the foremost and therefore indispensable “first responders” that made up the Group of Three.

What stirred this pot which highlighted the decreasing need, was the review in Ontario of the Fraser Research Report, which reviewed Fire Services in Ontario for the period of 1997-2012.  It discovered that during this time period in Ontario the number of firefighters increased by 36.3% while fires (including autos) had decreased in the same period by 41.4%.  In British Columbia in this same time period the number of firefighters had increased by 43.8%.

The hourly wages for firefighters followed suit, in Ontario, their wages went up 47.8% in this same time period, whereas price levels only increased by 34.6%.

All of this growth in both wages and infrastructure, while at the same time there has been a phenomenal decline in the need for “fire” services. There are some estimates that say as little as 5% of the fire department calls now relate to actual fires.

Clearly, this should call for most persons aware of ever dwindling municipal budgets and ever increasing tax levels, that maybe one could do away with some of the equipment, halls and personnel involved in firefighting. Although Ontario did cut back some of their services, most areas including British Columbia seem oblivious to the seemingly obvious.

So how is it that governments, municipal counsels, and the governing bodies seem to have missed this obvious decline in the need for fire services?  In searching for explanations one finds a masterful blend of self-promotion, coupled with an outright expansion of their roles outside of their intended mandate, which this blog covered previously.

Now it would seem that we need to add another component, a political component.

But we need to review how we got this new level.

With subtle flourish even the modern day lexicon has been transformed. No longer, police, fire and ambulance. Now, all are “first responders”.  Their’s is the only one group who has a vested interest as being on par with the others, both in terms of how they are viewed, how they are paid, and the significance of the role they play.

To their credit the firefighters early on figured out that they needed to expand their roles, they need to aggressively move into other mandates, areas where they were not before. In terms of mandate, of course the only place for them to go was to cross-over into the ambulance and police services.

They even made the subtle name change from Fire Department, to Fire and Rescue Services as they jumped headlong into car accidents and medical calls and they have been remarkably successful. They point out in somewhat boastful tones that they estimate 70% of their calls are now medical, as they “rescue” opioid overdoses, or respond to heart attacks. This is true, even though they do not and can not provide the same level of service as the paramedics.

Even their “rescue” capabilities, has become more specialized, now under the umbrella of “Technical rescue”.  ‘Auto extraction’, marine, or bridge rescue components are now separate tranches, in an attempt to be more expansive and all inclusive.  They have also  become, through little debate, the Hazardous Material experts.

Why? Their very employment and infrastructure survival depends on a sleight of hand, the general public needs to believe that they are the “first responders” of record. They need to convince you that they are the white hats, always there, always the first on scene. They are the life savers which we can not do without.

In B.C. there was a recent budget increase for paramedics of $31million.

The firefighters had the audacity to actually complain that it had cut into their calls for service. They justified their complaint saying that they were often first and more capable of getting to a scene “quicker”. The argument of getting there first by the way, is a constantly repeated theme. The obvious counter argument would be if there were more paramedics on the road, people more qualified, than their ability to get there first becomes moot.

The fire departments are unflagging in their efforts. Vancouver Fire Department and “Rescue Services” prior to the municipal elections were asking for an additional 21 fire personnel. They justify this of course on the need  to respond to 6200 opioid calls.

All of the above has been obvious for quite some time but what caught one’s eye during these same elections in the Lower Mainland was a somewhat new twist. It would appear that the firefighters are now honing their political voice, enhancing their political efforts, and are now becoming an active political force, a true definition of a self-interest group.

No more was this more obvious than in the City of  Burnaby, who have now elected an independent mayor, a former firefighter, Mike Hurley in an upset victory over Derek Corrigan.

Burnaby is an interesting case study.

All 281 firefighters in Burnaby belong to the International Association of Fire Fighters, Local 323.

If one visits their website, they make no mistake as to what they believe: “When it comes to Political Action, we support those that support us” – May 17, 2014.

It is equally clear from their website that the building block from which any political action will flow is the charities. Golf tournaments, city fairs, parades, and charitable balls dominate their photos and exclamations of fealty to the community.

In recent years the Burnaby firefighters came into the news on a couple of occasions, one when Burnaby firefighter Nick Elmes and a couple of others formed the Florian Knights, who met with and were sanctioned to wear their “colours” by the Hells Angels. They used to ride to work showing their “colours” before management stepped in.

Then there was Bryan Kirk, a 36 year firefighter who decided to retire after being confronted on his support of “Camp Cloud” which was the campsite put up by Indigenous protestors at the site of the Trans Mountain pipeline in Burnaby. The camp was eventually taken down, via court injunction by the Burnaby RCMP, but Kirk supported the protestors and went on record saying “I’m more inclined to put out the Olympic torch then put out a First Nation ceremonial fire”.  (Newly elected Hurley is also on record, aligning with Kirk, saying that he supports no pipeline.)

As one watched the celebrations at the Hurley election campaign, which was held at the Firefighters Public House in Burnaby, where a smiling Hurley was surrounded by Firefighters in similar styled t-shirts as they celebrated one of their own being elected. One could guess that a serious look at the monies being spent on the firefighters in a time when municipal budgets are under crises will not occur in Burnaby, at least while under the faithful guidance of Mr. Hurley.

This was not the only example.

In Langley the Langley Township Fire Department IAFF Local 4550 were out endorsing certain candidates.

In Surrey, the Surrey Firefighters endorsed Tom Gill for mayor (who lost to McCallum). Already on counsel in Surrey was the former firefighter Mike Starchuk, who was a firefighter for 32 years, and still headed up one of their Charitable foundations.

In 2014 Surrey First party raised $1.7 million in support of Linda Hepner– one of the biggest donors, if not the biggest were the Surrey Firefighters who donated $32, 564. 01.

In fairness, it should be pointed out that other “first responders” have become active in politics. Former police officers have taken roles as counsellors on various cities and townships, and one ex-RCMP member is now mayor of Pitt Meadows.

But this firefighter involvement seems different. It seems more organized, more overt, with an exposed agenda. A concerted effort to get their candidate elected.

Many will argue that they are members of the public, they too therefore have a right to get involved in the politics of the day. That is true and there are special interest groups who put forward candidates, and organize to support those candidates. But this seems somehow different.

One needs to ask, do fire, police and medical personnel hold a special role in our society? Clearly their mandates enter into our lives in different ways than other members of the general public. Are they in a position of undue influence? Do they have access to the media which is not available on a regular basis to the members of the general public?  Should or could it be perceived that there is a political component to the service provided by “first responders”? Police are held back from overt political support by a pressing need to be neutral in terms of the laws and its applications. Should medical and fire service be bound by any kind of neutrality?

It is the slippery slope of mixing politics with your role, especially one that is specifically mandated to serve the public. One should be equally alarmed at the Chiefs of Police supporting a particular party, or ambulance attendants supporting a particular pro-union politician.

One can not help but feel that the firefighter new found interest in municipal politics is also being influenced by the need to get a friendly face on the inside. One who will not question the need for greater and greater expansion, who will not look at the statistics, one who will not worry about unneeded financial expenditures. Is there a faint taint on the Burnaby election?

Maybe we need to go back to “police, fire or ambulance?” which is the first question still asked by 911 operators. Maybe the three services should be examined as separate entities, both in terms of budget and mandate, not as a single group of “first responders”. Taxpayers need to pay attention.

But hey, it’s the Xmas season, and the firefighters are busy setting up the Bright Nights Xmas Train in Stanley Park, where a portion of the proceeds goes to the BC Professional Fire Fighters Burn Fund. The media will be fawning over the children and the sponsoring firefighters on every news channel and after all who could argue with the cause. It’s brilliant and not just because of the 3,000 lights.

It used to be beefcake calendars, it’s much more subtle now, but the impression remains the same.

Photo Courtesy of  Pete at Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved

Healing Lodges – just a better place to be

Posted on by Pete Cross

Tori Stafford was last seen alive on April 8, 2009, shortly after leaving school, heading home, captured on a video camera going down Fyfe avenue in small town Woodstock Ontario. She was being led by the hand by a woman, feeling be-friended,  no doubt filled with an eight year old’s optimism.

Almost three months later, on July 21, 2009 her body was found in nearby Mount Forest, naked from the waist down, her Hannah Montana t-shirt and a pair of earrings she had borrowed from her mother her last vestiges of her short time on earth. She had suffered broken ribs, a lacerated liver and had died as a result of repeated blows to the head with a claw hammer.

A slow torturous death. Unimaginable to most, perpetrated by two individuals, 28 year old Michael Rafferty and 18 year old Terry-Lynne McClintic. In a trial Rafferty was convicted of sexual assault, kidnapping and first degree murder.

Originally charged with being an accessory to the murder, McClintic eventually pled guilty to a higher charge of first degree murder.

It was a case that in the view of the general public demanded retribution, they needed to pay for their crimes. We have become inured to a lot of public deaths, not this one, it was one of those that went to a level that causes a visceral reaction, you taste the bile in your throat.

She was sent to the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario, a normal conclusion in our Canadian judicial world to a heinous crime. Justice, or some form of justice meted out.

But then she entered our correctional system. And that is where the story re-ignited.

There is a couple of truisms that usually play out by those prisoners doing “Fed time”. First and foremost they quickly develop the need to survive; they need to find the easiest route through the system, the best jobs, the placement of video cameras, where you sit at dinner, who you befriend, who you don’t. A child killer has a path fraught with even greater peril, their heads becomes a swivel, their own deaths anticipated.  If you are capable, you learn the game and then you learn how to play the game.

A second truism is that those that are incarcerated find religion on a regular basis. It would be fair to say that not many murderers or child killers are religious when they enter the institution. But imprisonment, like imminent death, seems to assist in finding that religious part of your soul and lo and behold a child of God is often re-awakened.

Federal institutions are not fun places and one suspects that McClintic somehow learned of a better place to be during her first years in prison. Somehow she became aware of “healing lodges” which had been created primarily for indigenous women prisoners.  Apartment style living, a kitchen, visitors, no guards, versus 8 x 10 cell living, constantly staring at your requisite Orange is the new Black poster. Who could deny the appeal?

One can imagine the semblance of the conversation, where she was told that you had to be Indigenous to get in (which isn’t true), so she asked how do they test for that? They don’t, she was told. You can just say you are.

It is only a short step to then apply, declaring oneself indigenous and probably throwing in for a little positive aggrandizement, that she was very spiritual in nature.

It took eight years, but at last she got her wish, making it to the Okimaw Healing Lodge.  She had just begun enjoying the comforts of something like a home when all hell broke loose; her case came back into the public eye, and finally the Liberals broke down and made sure she got sent back, the public backlash too much for the sensitive Liberals. Sensitive to public outcry, not the plight of the victims family.

One should not resent Ms McClintic, she was just working the system and it almost worked. It may be that her fellow women prisoners are having a good laugh about the whole thing, McClintic now a heroine for gaming “the man”.

But one must hold the “system” accountable. How the decision was made reeks of a bureaucrat not doing a proper job, but should we not be questioning the very existence of the healing lodges themselves.

According to Correctional Services Canada, a healing lodge is a place where “we use aboriginal values, traditions and beliefs to design services and programs for offenders. The approach is “holistic and spiritual”. A religious treatment of the whole being.

Non-indigenous can also live at a healing lodge however they must follow “aboriginal programming and spirituality”. You must be the same religion, in line with indigenous spirituality. One would think that a person fitting this category would be a rare phenomena.

Spirituality is “the quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul”. But by no means is indigenous spirituality monolithic, there is no religious uniformity across the country, in fact of the 1.7 million indigenous, two out of three identify as being Christian. So it is sometimes difficult to understand what is being sought or would be practised.

Healing Lodges are funded either by Correctional Services Canada (CSC) and staffed by CSC, or funded by CSC and managed by “community partner organizations”.

There are a total of 9 lodges in Canada, 4 run by CSC and 5 by “community partners.”

How they came about is an example of the Ottawa world and the rarefied air they breathe. A constant whirling mix of academia, politicians intent on re-election, and business leaders trying to get in on the gravy; all feeding off each other, absorbing the latest en vogue thoughts and processes, all circling and feeding. A bureaucracy, acting autonomously, guided by the political flavour of the day, then developed and constructed without scrutiny. Nobody allowed to question or look within, and the process itself hidden behind multiple meetings in multiple layers, conducted in their own governmental language.

This force moves and adapts very slowly, moving in concentric circles, through steering committees, Senate and Parliamentary committees, inquiries, task forces, and fact-finding missions. They are unaware and uncaring of the public looking in, common sense often in short supply. To question is to be tossed out of the circle cut off from the government teat. Costs are not often part of the equation. It is from this process that came the belief that a healing lodge made perfect sense.

In 1990 there were calls and plans being made for five new regional correctional facilities.

A task force, as is often the case, was lurking in the background. The Task Force for Federally Sentenced Women, who in their report “Creating Choices” recommended that one of these facilities be specifically designed and run for indigenous women.

The Native Women’s Association, a Federally funded advocacy group, one of the groups in this Ottawa circle of life, proposed the concept of a healing lodge.

There was also a group at the time of  “former Federal aboriginal offenders who were advising the CSC”.  This would normally make one scratch their collective heads, however it is true. They of course agreed wholeheartedly and supported the Native Womens’ Association in the need for and development of a healing lodge.

So what is the logic behind this clearly subjective policy proposal. According  to the CSC there were two main reasons:

“Mainstream programs don’t work for Aboriginal offenders.”  This seems to have been presented as a statement of fact, but it is difficult finding any verifiable research this pronouncement is based upon.

Secondly, they stated that there is a dramatic “over-representation” of Indigenous people in Federal facilities. (Apparently persons convicted of crimes were now “representatives” and not convicts) They were not wrong.

In 2017 Indigenous individuals made up only 5% of the Canadian population; yet 25% of the males and 36% of the females behind bars were Indigenous. This number is expected to continue to grow, mainly due to the ever expanding birth rates and the continuing problems experienced by the Indigenous.

If one accepts the concept of needing a special place, a place where they would be treated differently from all other inmates, then the obvious next question is do they work?

A review of the digital brochures for each of these facilities talks about a holistic and spiritual approach, training and maintenance skills promoted as in other facilities, but all given the opportunity to “heal”, “grow spiritually”and re-connect with Aboriginal culture”.

Again, little to no evidence of its effectiveness, but they continually issue the statement that  “culturally-appropriate environments can contribute to the healing process of offenders”. That participants develop a “stronger familiarity with Indigenous history and traditional languages”. Not exactly an insurmountable goal, and it would be unfair to expect any kind of reduction of criminal activity, as this is after the fact after all. Heinous crimes have already been committed.

By offering beyond the usual training and teaching found in any correctional facility, does the offering of “weekly sweat lodges”, “pipe ceremonies”, “smudging”,”medicine wheel teaching”, “carving”, “beading” and “sun and rain dances” lead to a lesser recidivism rate among indigenous? Is it any better training than what is offered already to the rest of the prison population. Or is it serving as just an easier place to do your time.

In a 2013 government backgrounder, the government said that the recidivism rate was 6%, when the national average was 11%.

However, in an earlier government analysis in 2002, it measured the recidivism rate as being 19%, compared to 13% for indigenous released from minimum security facilities. A dismal failure.

In 2016 the National Post reported that 18 inmates had escaped from healing lodges over the previous five years. Not unexpectedly, as there are only security guards watching video monitors, instructed only to call the police if someone walks away.

There is even a lack of acceptance by the Indigenous Reserves where the healing lodges have been proposed. In 2012, a Review by the government found that there was a problem with community acceptance as not every aboriginal community wanted or was willing to have the lodges in their communities.

So where does leave us. Everyone knows that the ‘real’ problems for the indigenous: substance abuse, inter-generational abuse, residential schools, low levels of education, low employment and income, sub-standard housing, sub-standard health, isolation, violence, greater inclination to gang violence, and mental health issues are the reasons the Indigenous and their youth incarcerations rates are at stratospheric levels.

In March 2018 the government released a report entitled ‘Updated Costs of Incarceration’. A male offender in a minimum security institution costs $47,370 per person or $130 per day. A female offender in a minimum security institution costs $83, 861 or $230 per day. An inmate at a healing lodge is the most expensive, costing $122,796 or $336.00 per day.

The Salvation Army gives out a bowl of soup and a prayer on the skids of Vancouver each and every day, before providing food and lodging, combining their spiritual beliefs of salvation with a social cause. But they are dealing and providing at the source. There is a measurable impact.

The Federal government has released records indicating that since 2011 over 20 child killers have been sent to healing lodges. The Liberal defence in the McClintic case is that the Conservatives did it too.

These lodges are better for the inmates, providing a nicer place to be, but as a tool in the Corrections toolbox, they have been a costly and failed experiment.

Is it not time to close down this experiment?  Besides, we don’t want McClintic to have a nicer place to stay.

It isn’t fair to Tori.

Photo Courtesy of Carlos Ebert via Flickr Creative Commons – Some Rights Reserved

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Historical negativism…reaching Orwellian levels in this country

Posted on by Pete Cross

Historical negativism or denialism is the illegitimate distortion of historical records, which James McPherson, the Pulitzer winning historian further describes as a “consciously falsified or distorted interpretation of the past to serve partisan or ideological purposes in the present”.  A “cultivation of a specific political myth, sometimes with the consent of government.”

Which brings one to the 2nd last apology by PM Trudeau and the Liberals. (It is admitted that keeping track of the numerous apologies is getting increasingly difficult)

We were recently exposed to Trudeau riding in on a black steed, in a set-up photo moment. He was cantering in to dramatically apologize to the Tsilhqot’in in Nemiah Valley part of the Quesnel area of British Columbia.  He had travelled across the country to once again apologize for events which occurred over 150 years ago; events that occurred on October 26, 1864, an event which has been termed by historians as the “Chilcotin uprising”.

This “uprising” was carried out by the self-designated “War Chiefs” of the Tsilhqot’in: Chief Klatsassin, Telloot, Tahipitt, Piele and Chessers.  As the Liberal story goes they had been arrested 150 years earlier, convicted of murder, sentenced to death and eventually hung. This was a travesty according to your current government.

Apologizing to persons convicted of murder is unusual even in this day and age, even for this current group of politicians. Pictures of our theatrical PM Justin Trudeau literally riding in to set the record straight, to apologize for the execution of six chiefs of Tsilhqot’in more than 150 years ago seemed curious, worthy of further exploration.

In fact this was not the first apology for this event. In 1993 the B.C. Government apologized originally and erected a cairn in memoriam.

This first apology, as it turns out, was as a result of an Inquiry in British Columbia headed by Justice Anthony Sarich, who had been tasked to explore the “native people of the Cariboo-Chilcotin and the Justice system of the Province”.

He  issued a final report: “Report on the Cariboo-Chilcotin Justice Inquiry, 1993.”

In his report Justice Sarich talked about this historical event which was referred to as the  “Chilcotin uprising” or sometimes the “Bute Inlet massacre”.

There appears to have been no argument at any time that the Chiefs were innocent, but he said that there was “concern that the chiefs were induced to surrender and give inculpatory statements on a promise of immunity by Magistrate Cox”. In other words they had been “tricked” into surrendering and in doing so made some statements that implicated themselves.

Sarich stated that throughout the Chilcotin region, the story of this “uprising” had verbally been portrayed in the Indigenous community as the Chiefs defending their land, an effort in the fight against colonialism. So Sarich now had to confront two versions of the story; the documented historical version including trial transcripts and the one being verbally passed down in the Indigenous community.

Sarich in his final report, somewhat surprisingly, and not very Judge like, could not come to a conclusion and as the flavour of the day was appeasement, said “whatever the correct version that episode of history has left a wound in the body of Chilcotin society. It is time to heal that wound.”

So, on the basis of “whatever the correct version”, the BC government formerly apologized to the Indigenous of the Chilcotin in 1993.

Not to be outdone, the Trudeau government, who seems to search the historical records for anything resembling a good bandwagon when it comes to anything Indigenous also issued a “Statement of Exoneration” in March 2018 in Parliament. Of course, the opposition parties on hearing an apology to the Indigenous felt naturally compelled to join in unified approval. After all, how could any apology to the indigenous not be assumed to be well researched, another step toward reconciliation. Perception is  everything, it is part of the reconciliation dogma.

What really catches ones attention were the actual words in the Exoneration document drafted by the Liberals. It said that the Chiefs are “fully exonerated because they were acting as one independent nation engaged in war with another when they were attacked and killed… a betrayal of trust” .

Even a dim historian, would wonder how was it possible to be a Nation at “war” when we were not yet a nation.  This occurred in 1864 and our country was formed in 1867. Needless to say there neither was there a recollection of our yet to be “country” at “war” at the time.

Trudeau said the Chiefs were “protecting their Nation which was under threat” and they had acted “in accordance with their laws and traditions”.

So where did all this start?

In 1864 Governor Frederick Seymour was the colonial administrator in the region at the time and because of the interest in the extraction of gold, he also had a Gold Commissioner named William Cox. The governor had authorized or sanctioned the building of a wagon road from Bute Inlet to Fort Alexandria, with the idea being to connect it eventually to the Cariboo road, and then on to the gold fields of the Cariboo.

The killings for which the Chiefs were convicted began on April 29, 1864 when a ferryman, connected to the road crews, Timothy Smith, was confronted by the Chiefs. Whatever form the confrontation took it did not end well for Smith. They demanded food, shot Smith, and then threw his body into the river. The Chiefs then looted the food stores and supplies taking with them a 1/2 ton of provisions.

The following day, the Chiefs then attacked a workers camp in which three men were injured and escaped down river. Peterson Dane, Edwin Mosely and Buckley (last name unknown) escaped down the river, but the remaining crew were all shot or hacked to death. Their bodies were also thrown into the river.

Four miles further down, a foreman William Brewster was working on blazing the trail along with three others. They too were attacked by the Chiefs, and all were killed. Brewster’s body had been mutilated, his penis cut off and stuffed in his mouth, his heart cut out of his chest and eaten.

Later a settler of Puntzi Lake, William Manning, who was not related to the work crews was also killed.

A few days later, a pack train which was travelling through the area was subsequently “warned” about the Chiefs and the killing rampage, but the train decided to carry on. They were “ambushed” by the Chiefs and all were killed.

By the end of this spree, nineteen persons had been killed, shot or hacked to death.

Governor Seymour on hearing of the killings sent crews of twenty, and then fifty people in an effort to locate and arrest the Chiefs. All were to no avail.

This led to an eventual meeting of Commissioner Cox with the Chiefs. Cox apparently gave them assurances of friendship, and when the Chiefs came forward, all were arrested in what had to have been one of the original ‘sting’ operations.

In a trial all were convicted and sentenced to death by Justice Begbie who was fluent in both the Shuswap and Chilcotin languages. Their defence at the trial (and there is a transcript) was that they were “waging war”. The road crew they argued had been sent by the Colonial government, and therefore they were “under threat of smallpox and further loss of land”.

This was presented by Trudeau in his speech, in the Liberal revision said that the colonial government was “unwilling to accept that these six chiefs were leaders and warriors of the Tsilhqot’in Nation”…and that they were trying to “maintain rights to land that had never been ceded.”  Then adding that they were “well regarded as heroes by their people”.

The heart of the issue is the motive. The Chiefs, and now this latest government all seem to believe that they were an “unceded” nation that could lay claim to any and all lands at any time. Therefore they could self determine if the road crew was on their “territory” and therefore conclude that the very building of the road was an act of war by a colonial government.

It stretches ones incredulity. The other possibilities and far more likely motives were “plunder”, “revenge”, and “starvation”.

The fact was that these individuals were innocents, killed in cold blood, persons working on a road, not at “war”. These were defenceless individuals who were slaughtered, mutilated and their bodies thrown in the river all seemed to escape the government vettors of apologies.  There was no innocence here. There was no denial of the killings. Judge Begbie in his comments called the Chiefs “cruel, murdering pirates”.

If this trial was conducted in 2018, it is highly likely that their self declaration of war on a nation would not bear much evidentiary weight. The fact that they made inculpatory statements, and had been tricked into being arrested may have tainted any inculpatory statements they made, but it would not have led to a finding of innocence.

Mel Rothenberger, who wrote a book on the events, and who is a descendent of one of the victims of the massacre was interviewed by CBC Radio. He was upset by the revisionist version which has been allowed to be told without any kind of academic review. He too talks about the fact that there was no declaration of war, that these victims were hacked, shot and plundered. This was not war, this was a robbery homicide.

Rothenberger’s version is based on the record, as there are numerous academic documents including a trial transcript record. In fact he says it was one of the best documented areas of research in Canadian history of this time period.

The Indigenous version is clearly subjective, verbally worked over and passed down over the decades. In their reworking of the events, they obviously felt that portraying them as heroes and not criminals was in their best interest and now goes with this modern age of revisionism, the chant being forever and always the victims of colonialism.

This was cold-blooded murder. And your government in an effort to further ingratiate themselves to the indigenous cause seems to feel it is ok to pardon those murders, the colonialists and the innocent victims forgotten.

Michael Dunn in an article on Theory of Knowledge.net, writes on how and why history gets re-written and offers up four possible scenarios.

The fourth reason he cites is that there are social, political, and psychological paradigms that alter the historical record. In other words the political and social climate seeks to change history.

We were warned by George Orwell who said, in his acclaimed book “1984” that “he who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past”.

This story,  at this particular time in Canadian history was indeed a black mark, one from which we should all learn. It should not be a proud moment for the Indigenous. Maybe, just maybe it is an example of the state at the time, the ongoing clash of colonialism with the indigenous. Nothing more.

Even if one accepts that this Indigenous group were desperate, hungry, frustrated by the ongoing Colonial inroads being made one still has to conclude that this was a murderous crew with much different intent. To bend and twist the pages of history, to hide the motivations, to cover up the brutality of it all and then make them heroes for massacring innocents is beyond the pale.

Not one journalist, not one parliamentarian felt the need to ask a question. No one did their homework. It makes one wonder how the descendants of the victims feel, but one thing is certain, they will never get an apology.

In March of 1968 during the Vietnam war, over three hundred unarmed civilians were killed by U.S. Troops; unarmed women, elderly and children were killed as an act of war. The defence argued that they were at war, therefore anything goes.  Eventually Lt. William Calley was convicted of “war crimes” in a highly publicized trial which was considered one of the most shocking incidents of the Vietnam war. The killing of innocents even in a time of war could not be sanctioned.

In this smaller, Canada version, there was no war, but the Chiefs claimed in their defence and during their rewriting of their history that they were at war, defending their “nation” regardless of the fact that these were innocents, not soldiers in some real or imagined war. At the very least these Chiefs were war criminals. No mangling of the historical record can make them heroes.

Trudeau recently said while in Europe that “the very capacity for a citizen to engage with the truth is under attack”. How right he is.

The Liberals and those that followed suit should be ashamed. We will have to see if they too get “exonerated” in the next election, or maybe in 150 years.

Photo Courtesy of Jonathan Hayward of the Canadian Press some Rights Reserved

 

 

 

 

Toke Anyone….

Posted on by Pete Cross

With the greatest reluctance and with a feeling of useless inevitably, one feels the need to write about the legalization of marihuana. The Liberal government grasping and pulling that younger crowd to their breast, exhorting them to be free, less anxious,  and to surround themselves with the elixir of swirling smoke and an expanded mind.  Free to be impaired, medically or otherwise. No one to bother you. The big medical experiment has now become law.

We now join Uruguay as the only other country in the world where it is entirely legal., We join the 2nd smallest country in South America, a country now in “economic decline and factional struggles” since its return to democratic ideals in 1985. A country where its biggest problem now is young people leaving the country, not the young people staying home to smoke pot. But we digress.

First it should be stated that there is very little caring on this writer’s part about the pluses and minuses of marihuana use, although clearly the medical good of this drug has been highly exaggerated by the effusive pot community who will regale you with cure-all stories at a moments prompting. It is kind of like listening to alcoholics sing the medicinal effects of having a shot of whiskey before you go to bed. Could be true, but again maybe not, but one needs to consider the source.

However, if you believe the hype, believe the constant bombardment of how good the CBD component of marihuana is, then you’ll understand how the “medicinal use” of marihuana has tripled since 2016.

Meanwhile the august body of the Canadian Medical Association states that “while the CMA recognizes that some individuals suffering from terminal illness or chronic disease may obtain relief with cannabis, the CMA remains concerned about the lack of clinical research, guidance, and regulatory oversight for cannabis as a potential medical intervention”. You should also understand that medical marihuana has not undergone testing such as that used for prescription drugs.

They go on to say in their CMA policy statement that the “Canadian Medical Association has consistently opposed Health Canada’s approach which places physicians in the role of gatekeeper in authorizing access to marihuana”.  In other words, they don’t want to prescribe it. They went further in an editorial saying that the legalization of marihuana was an “uncontrolled experiment in which the profits of cannabis producers and tax revenues are pitched against the health of Canadians”. Given any set of other circumstances one would have thought that at the very least comments like this would give one pause before full government endorsement. Not with these Liberals.

Mike Farnworth, BC governments Minister of Public Safety in an interview with the NY Times said: ” its an octopus with many tentacles, and there are many unknowns…I don’t think that when the Federal government decided to legalize marihuana it thought through all of the implications.”

This legislation will likely go down in historic terms as one of the worst prepared, least thought out bills ever passed by Parliament; a shining example of government inadequacy on three different levels.

While it is difficult in this age to find any level of government capable of introducing legislation in any kind of timely manner; with properly thought out enforcement provisions and having anticipated the legal challenges, this legislation is a true standout in terms of lack of preparation. There is a need for not one but three levels of government, in 13 different Provinces, to coordinate and work in unison.

To add to the jurisdictional chaos is that there is significant  medical, legal, political, labour, and business layers to the effects of the legislation, all who want a seat at the three level government dance. All this has been known for a couple of years of course, but clearly not enough time for any government in Canada, or any police agency to be prepared. Most government agencies, including the police need a couple of years to organize a washroom break.

The level and the extent of hypocrisy is overwhelming. Trudeau and company doing the old ‘ole’ as the bull of repercussions slide by with nary a glance. The matador untouched by the horn of the bull, untouched by the numerous and sundry issues surrounding this legislation.

So now the mad scramble is on, while on the judicial side line lawyers salivate, drooling and falling over themselves like a pride of jackals preparing and vying to establish their new found  “expertise” in the criminal and labour laws. This taxpayer legal honey pot should keep legal firms in Canada busy for the next several years.

The government spokesperson for all of this is Bill Blair, the consummate chameleon, a 2nd generation cop who rose to head the Toronto Police Service, who has now had a revelation and has been chosen as the front man for the Liberals.  In an interview with the National Post, he describes how he has gone from from leading the police fight, the knight in shining armour as a former chief of police, to now principles and beliefs thrown aside,  he has been transformed in to the the righteous spokesperson. With the same semi-autocratic demeanour and certainty he displayed as the police chief, he is  now trying to convince us that this is going to eliminate organized crime.

How are they going to do this, according to Blair and his government they feel that because the government is so good at running businesses they are going to compete with organized crime, provide a good quality product, at a good price in a pretty package, and easily accessibility.

So far they claim they are only going to add $1.00 in taxes on a gram of pot, including sales and excise tax. Now considering the new law allows one to carry up 30 gms of pot, enough for 60 joints, that will mean an additional cost of $30 in taxes for your personal stash.

If the average user of pot spends $100.00 a week according to a recent survey, they will now therefore be spending $130 a week. $120.00 extra for a month, just in taxes. The appeal of the legal dispensary may wear a little thin at those prices.

In the home of BC Bud, so far the government has only opened one store in British Columbia; in Kamloops far from the Lower Mainland, far from the most populous area of the Province.

Dispensaries in Alberta have already run out of product.

You don’t need to have an MBA to realize that if you have no products when you open a new store, you may have a problem. But government is good at this right?

So far in the policing world what seems to be garnering the most enforcement attention is the potential for increases in impaired driving. It is difficult to say whether this will be the case, as again, nobody seems to know answers to much surrounding this issue. However we already know that drug impaired driving is increasing, and now exceeds that of alcohol impaired driving (40% of Canadian drivers killed in Canada were impaired by drug, while 33% of those killed tested positive for alcohol)

But to try and win some counter points, the Liberals proclaim  that besides increasing the penalties for impaired driving (which they have done)  they are going further and arming the police with the ability and knowledge to detect and process impaired by drug drivers.

Their two programs are the Standard Field Sobriety Testing and the Drug Recognition Expert Program. (it should be acknowledged that this writer is a former DRE at the Instructor Level). These have been developed and been around since 1979,  in particular, in the United States.  The reason they came about and were developed by the Los Angelas Police Department was that there was no precise drug testing regime in existence and that has not changed.

There is no Breathalyzer equivalent for drug testing.

What was developed in its stead was a 12 step semi- subjective evaluation method.  It has been challenged as being too subjective already in the Ontario Court of Appeal in R vs. Bingley. 

Regardless of how that turns out, what they are not detailing is the extraordinary time effort that will be needed on the part of the police to conduct the tests, as long as they can even find a trained DRE officer in their policing area.(as of October 2018, according to their own government website there were 833 DRE trained officers in Canada–out of the roughly 69,000 police officers).

When confronted with the DRE numbers, Mr. Goodale quickly goes to the fact that they  have 13,000 officers who are trained in SFST.

So what are those tests?  Basically they are eye checks (follow the pen) where the officer is looking for Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus (HGN), followed by a couple of physical tests such as walk and turn, or standing on one leg. If you fail, then you are asked to comply with the tests of a Drug Recognition Expert (again, if you can find one) which takes another hour or so, and then the DRE will demand a blood sample, usually a pin prick to the finger.

If all this sounds like an overblown, a time consuming process, it is.

That is why in the desperate search for a drug “breathalyzer”  has been going on for several years, and so far German technology seems to be the front runner in Canada.

The government has just committed $161 million over the next five years to the purchase and training on the officious sounding Draeger Drug Test 5000, which is designed through a simple saliva test determine if you have THC in your system.

But, alas, there are some issues with this magical instrument.

In testing by the Journal of Analytical Toxicologists in Norway they determined that the machine “did not absolutely correctly identify DUID”. In fact there was a 14.5 % failure rate for false-positives, and a 13.5% failure rate for false negatives. The Australians who use this device felt that it was pretty good and reliable, but only in ” two thirds ” of their cases. Bring in the lawyers.

Oh yes, the device only works between 4 and 40 degrees Celsius and it takes about a half hour for the device to work, about 10 times longer than the roadside breathalyzer.

It should be added that a failure of the Draeger test is not an offence. It only leads the officer to have you submit to a DRE evaluation or demand a further blood test.

If you still are unconvinced that there will be a problem with court challenges. Consider this: the Federal government in the legislation has stated that if you have 2 to 5 nanograms of THC in your system you are impaired for three types of offences.

This too is an issue. The central question being the efficacy of measuring cannabis impairment. Expert after expert testified to the government that what constitutes impairment will differ from individual to individual. It depends on the individual and their tolerance. There is little doubt that this will all be eventually chased all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

So as one stands outside the new pot establishment in Kamloops, with its mysterious blocked out windows, as Chrysler Neons roll up with teenagers giggling and pointing to the store as they try to find parking. The bored security guard sits on the iron rail, a beacon of safety, as persons emerge holding their discreet but pretty packages just like at the Apple store, and as the persons in the line shuffle two steps closer to their Nirvana, one wonders where this is all taking us.

Are we better off now as a society with this new legislation? Are we going to be awed by the medical advancements provided by marihuana and its associated products?

Are the groups of organized crime going to wilt away into the sunset, saying sorry you are right, we can’t compete. Walk away from a $5.7 billion dollar industry?  In decades of policing it was never my experience that organized crime groups walk away from money, let alone that kind of money. Evidence the fact that they often kill people for interfering in this gold rush.

Are they going to control the number of underage people using marihuana or is it going to lead to further use? In a survey done by Lighthouse for the Cannabis consumer Update it found that 50% of pot users did so on a weekly basis spending on average $100 per week.

In the age bracket of 18 to 34, 61% had used marihuana, 21% used 2 to 5 times a week, while 19% used it everyday.

Provide a more accessible product, remove the stigma of illegality and it seems to be common sense that the numbers of young pot users will have to go up.

The medical association recommends nobody use marihuana under the age of 25 due to brain development issues.  The Federal government and the Provincial governments have already agreed on a range of ages who can purchase marihuana legally, all under the age of 25.

Are there people going to get rich? For sure. But not you and me, or the casual pot smoker. Brian Mulroney maybe, or those others that have invested in government approved production and distribution centres such as big pharmaceuticals. Of course the big winners will be the lawyers as they begin to clog the courts over the next several years.

But here is this writer’s prediction(s):

In ten years time, we won’t be talking about it, the fad will have worn thin.

There will be more impaired drivers on the road, and minimal enforcement of those laws as the prosecution of those offences prove too onerous.

There will be more young people suffering from mental issues associated with the use of marihuana.

They will determine that pot has some medicinal pain killing benefits, not much else.

They will also determine that pot is addictive.

The government will have more money in its coffers.

Organized crime will be discovered to be investors and have infiltrated into the “legalized” production of marihuana.

Robberies will go up at BC Liquor Branches.

The Indigenous will have opened up their own production facilities and will be able to sell it cheaper as they get to avoid excise taxes, but they will have a difficult time saying it is part of “reconciliation”.

Canada for the next several years will be known around the world, not as the welcoming country to immigrants, not as a forward thinking place to invest, or not as a haven of academic achievement. It will be known as the place where marihuana is legal now.

A police officer will challenge the courts and the policy of the RCMP based on his/her need for medical marihuana. To not allow him/her to work it will be argued is against the Charter of Rights.

Meanwhile ‘Joey” or “Emily” driving around their small hometown at 9 at night in their parents car, wanting some weekend pot, living in small town Canada, will not be able to find or buy at the dispensary. There will be a new generation of “bootleggers”.

But if “Joey” plans a few days ahead, the government retorts, he can order it online.

That is if the Post Office is not on strike.

Photo Courtesy of Evan at Flickr Commons Some Rights Reserved

 

 

 

 

 

 

Surrey Election 2018- is it the beginning of the end of the RCMP as we know it?

Posted on by Pete Cross

On October 20th, the electorate of Surrey said that they are fed up with the RCMP.  With the number of shootings seemingly unstoppable, followed by the usual explanations formulated by practised media spin units,  saying it was a “targeted” homicide, and the “public has nothing to fear”, it seems to have reached a breaking point. Yellow police line tape seems to stretch for miles and dominate the weekend news in Surrey. There are the innocents who have died in Newton, businesses and people who don’t even bother to report crime anymore in Whalley and Guildford,  and they seem to have finally reached the end. It has been a long time coming.

In the past, the 10% discount for the RCMP seems to have silenced the critics who complained of less officers on the street, a growing and expansive police budget, and increases in property crime and drive by shootings. Maybe this is no longer true.

The RCMP has been part of the City of Surrey since 1951 when fifteen constables began patrolling the town which became a city in 1993. It  has been growing at remarkable speeds ever since, with a population now exceeding over 500,00 and the detachment in seeming lockstep, has grown to over eight hundred officers. It is the flagship detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, their largest detachment in Canada, and that flagship is now sinking under its own weight.

Now, a party led by the irascible, tempestuous and often incomprehensible Doug MacCallum has re-swept into power at the age of 73; running on a singular party theme of safety in the streets.

His newly founded party is a one issue group, calling itself the Safe Surrey Coalition. Counsellors who have swept into office with him, including ex-RCMP police officer Jack Hundial, also have identified themselves as singular in their focus, and that focus is to get rid of the RCMP. In their view and clearly in the view of the electorate the RCMP has failed the people of Surrey.

MacCallum is a colourful character, never an admirer of the RCMP, who was last in power in 2005. MacCallum was removed from power originally in 2005 by Diane Watts, and then followed by her appointed successor Linda Hepner. Both were clear fans of the RCMP, buying into the agenda of the RCMP and sprinkling every press conference with plaudits and statements of the excellent job the RCMP was doing.

But the scepticism has been brewing under the surface for years. Many police officers have openly expressed the opinion that the RCMP can not keep up with the times, including this writer; that it is governed and directed by the highly political Ottawa, an Ottawa and Federal Liberal government which has long since lost the confidence of the public, at least in terms of policing.

A police force which seems to be embroiled in internal unrest, whether it be sexual harassment, or poor wages. Wrapping themselves in the flags of diversity and inclusion, seemingly oblivious and unable to relate to the citizens of Surrey where the bullets continued to richochet around the community police stations.

This is an RCMP which seems to have grown into and become an ineffective agency.  Ridiculously low solve rates, officers constantly complaining about low wages and poor working conditions, insufficient manpower, and a parade of weak leadership at the top of the detachment have been fuelling this slide.

A top management level interested in keeping Ottawa happy,  interested in career advancement and promotion while expanding a bloated and inefficient plainclothes sections, all the while seemingly oblivious to countering the day in and day out criminal activity for which Surrey has always been infamous.

Their only response to the crime, to the death of innocents was that they needed more officers. From Bill Fordy to Dwayne McDonald, always the same, they need more. During Hepner’s time as mayor she claimed to have added 134 officers, but it was never enough.

It was a tried and true chant while at the same time there were several re-organizations of the detachment, each seeming to add further and further layers to the detachment bureaucracy, and a clear bloating of the numbers of officers in specialized sections to the obvious detriment of officers on the “road”.

No one questioned the inside shenanigans at the detachment. At the time of the last municipal election a few days ago, McDonald was again scheduled to request further officers. (It should be pointed out that from 2014-2017 Mr. McDonald was the officer in charge of IHIT, which grew from 48 officers to 110 individuals and a collapsing solvency rate hovering around 20% )

In the last number of years, you would hear words like “progressive”, “community first”, “engaging our youth”; innocuous silly platitudes, all designed to fudge over detailed analysis of what was going on both inside and outside the detachment.

Over the years the RCMP has hidden behind those detachment walls, never allowing outside examination of management to any degree. Annual Performance Plans have been tailored to speak in generalities, no deep dives into the statistics, little of substance or real meaning. An annual exercise in bureaucratic concealment, far from the eyes of the public.

So the citizens of Surrey are now going to begin an exercise to exorcise themselves from the red tunic, and for many that served in this community over the past number of years, it will indeed be sad. But it is inevitable.

The RCMP management of the last twenty years have been oblivious, unable to speak the truth either for political reasons or because they were “going along to get along”. Somewhere the vision was blinded, lost to political expediency, somewhere there has been the disappearance of the goals to “uphold the law and provide quality service”  (RCMP Mission Statement.)  They focused on the writing of the Mission statement and selling it, as opposed to the actual performing of the Mission statement.

They began to develop “strategic media units” to create the spin. Honesty became blurred.

None of this is to say that any upcoming Municipal police force will be a bed of roses. It will be more expensive for sure and political control will be local. Not Ottawa, but political none the less.

Most officers currently policing Surrey will likely switch over to any new agency, grown tired of the RCMP, no longer concerned about being a member of a National police force and not overly concerned with the history of boots and breeches. They are the millenials after all — careers, work life balance and wages are their new loyalties.

There is good work being done at the Surrey RCMP. There are good people working long and difficult hours. There are good investigations which have been successful and most of these people would likely join and be part of any new Municipal agency, lost to the RCMP for good.

The singular and most obvious problem was that the operational policing structure, the traditional pyramid where the solid base was the uniform on the street was turned upside down. It became a top heavy bureaucracy infatuated with promotion and specialization, forgetting that everything starts on the streets. They lost sight of the fact that policing principles, its basics, has not changed for decades. It is a government agency which should never have lost track of what was important, where the expertise and productivity actually come from, those formative years in policing.

Seniority, supervision, and continuity took a back seat to what was perceived and sold as being more sophisticated. Everyone became an expert. This combined with demographic issues has led to the average service of the RCMP on the road in General Duty in Surrey to be 1.8 years. (This according to sources, as the RCMP will not admit to the public that this is the case).

If MacCallum succeeds in removing the RCMP then the RCMP nationally will be affected. It would be an admission that they are incapable of city policing, an admission which  would be a loss of face.

For the people of Surrey who are demanding change, their only hope is that it is successful and the Mounties get the proverbial boot.

To date the Mounties have not re-acted to the election. Maybe, they don’t care. Maybe, they want it to come about as it may lead them toward a possible goal of an FBI style RCMP. Maybe, there will be a domino effect and regional policing will once again come to the fore. Further time will tell.

To the officers that came and went from Surrey Detachment, part of their policing heritage will be altered, and as the “white shirts” toddle off to their better than average pensions, they should at least consider apologizing for their inability to adapt, for being caught up in playing the government political game, for not taking principled stands and  for being dishonest in terms of accountability.

Like the battered and bruised boxer answering the bell after 8 rounds; the RCMP question is whether they can make it to the final round, still answering the bell, arms up trying to avoid head shots, muttering about being cheaper, in an effort to keep from being knocked out. As Roberto Duran said when fighting Sugar Ray Leonard and famously declared “no mas”;  there indeed may be “no more” fight left in the RCMP.

Photo Courtesy of Douglas Miller via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved

 

 

 

 

Mandate

Posted on by Pete Cross

Like a 1950’s child running to meet the postman for the Sears catalogue, one wonders whether Ms.Lucki dashed to greet the postman who was delivering  her new “mandate” letter.

If you were bored, frustrated, killing time waiting for shift end, or enjoy a little masochism, then you too may have read with anticipation the Honourable Ralph Goodale’s “mandate letter” to Commissioner Lucki.

The document is surprisingly brief from the illustrious Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. It was likely “ghost written”, by a high placed bureaucrat and screened by a legal team, nevertheless it is still revealing. With a little in-between line reading, if there were any doubts as to why Commissioner Lucki rose to the surface and became the cream of the crop in the view of that Liberal august selection committee, then this document should remove that doubt.

What is interesting is what is missing, what was not worthy of mention. If you want to believe that operational policing is the soul of the future RCMP under Commissioner Lucki, you may be wrong. If you think terrorism, cyber crime, white collar crime or child pornography are occupying the minds of the RCMP management in the endless future meetings at 73 Leikin Drive in Ottawa,  you will likely be disappointed.

The letter begins with a reference to Section 5(1) of the RCMP Act where the Commissioner of the RCMP has the “control and management of the RCMP and all matters connected to the Force”, but of course at the “direction of the Minister”. He goes on to say that “police independence underpins the rule of law and ministerial direction”,  that he will rely on the “advice and input” to “help me” establish “strategic priorities.” Blah blah blah.

All that requisite dribble aside, he then goes on to outline what Commissioner Lucki’s “role” will be. Which will be to “reinforce” and “support” the organization in its effort to “modernize and reform the RCMP’s culture”. 

Its future “transformation”, as envisioned by that old sage Goodale will include the “health and safety of the RCMP employees”… “including from harassment and violence in the workplace”….and of course “enhancing its role in reconciliation” with “Indigenous peoples”.

All predictable of course, in light of Justin Trudeau and his cabinet recurring themes, but stark all the same in its simplicity.

The next paragraph mentions “internal and external governance structures and practises”, no doubt a reference to a future civilian administrative oversight.

Then the letter returns to clearly its main preoccupation. “You will need to prioritize that the RCMP is free from bullying, harassment, and sexual violence” and that she should prepare an extensive response to the reviews that were outlined by Sheila Fraser from the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission. She will need to “ensure that the RCMP is representative of Canada’s diverse population, including gender parity, and that women, Indigenous Peoples and minority groups are better reflected in positions of leadership”.

Mr. Goodale ends by reflecting on Commissioner Lucki’s previous posting of Training Branch in Regina, and he lauds her for her commitment to training, including “diversity, inclusion, and a respectful workplace”.

So where does this leave us? Like any change in power, whether it be in government, or in a government agency, it is helpful to look at the scope and focus of the change and try and determine who are the winners and who are the losers. Who are now in favour, and who have fallen out of flavour. Here are some predictions.

The Winners

If you are indigenous in the RCMP, or if you are even partially indigenous, or if you can claim a distant ancestry to anything resembling an indigenous group you are a clear winner.

If you are a member of the First Nations Policing Program in 2018 the Liberals have already invested $291 million in the program over the next five years. You are a winner.  This group which is overseen by this same Ministry is designed to “enhance the effectiveness of policing services in First Nation and Inuit communities.”

What “enhance” means in government speak can be anybody’s guess, but lets face it, they will likely be able to reach that goal.

If you want further proof of the constant indigenous theme, don’t stop at Ms. Lucki, look at the rest of the Senior Executive Committee of the RCMP management. Besides, a clear background tendency to the Federal policing side, you will also constantly see the theme of indigenous relations and its level of importance.

Even the more vocal and somewhat rebellious indigenous groups in Northern Manitoba are winners. Commissioner Lucki worked and resided in that area and received an Order of Merit for her “efforts to improve relations”. It doesn’t say that she did improve them, just that she made an effort of course.

The second clear winner are female officers.  With a relatively pristine record, and if you have more than 15 years of service, your odds of becoming management have become markedly greater.

This is not new. The trend for more women officers has been moving along at a high clip since the 1980’s when they first became the hiring priority.  In 2006 there were only 6% of officers were female, in 2016 that number has increased to 21%; more than a 250% increase. In 2016 as well, 13% of senior officers in policing were women.  There will need a massive advancement of female officers in the next few years to have a visible measurable impact, one which Lucki can hold up as evidence of success. Expect demands for more flexible work hours, greater considerations for pregnancy and eventual return to work accommodations.

If you self identify as a member of LGBTQ during the recruitment process or a member of any of the visible minorities, then you too should be a winner.

If you have a claim under the sexual harassment class action you will be a winner. There is little likelihood that this Liberal free-spending government will be eager to deny any claims even if some may be spurious and would normally warrant some authentication. There has been an exponential growth in claims, so expect that to continue.

The Losers

If you are a farmer or resident of the North Battleford area of Saskatchewan which enjoys the highest crime rate in Canada you are a loser, and you should not expect any improvements in policing for the next few years. You are in the way for those who will be pushing the indigenous agenda, so therefore you are politically expendable.

If you are an officer in Chase B.C. or Dauphin Manitoba, hoping beyond hope, that a replacement will be found to fill your position, you are a loser. The current staffing consensus indicates that there are not enough new people to even fill the retirement levels. Lack of manpower has been the theme for a few years, but expect this to continue as it never even gets honourable mention anymore. Clearly, they have given up on the phrase “more for less”, as its marketability has become more irritant than salve for the masses.

If you are optimistically expecting a pay raise to bring you back into contention in the police universe, you are a loser. The Federal government is clearly sitting back and waiting for the union process to get settled. Is it necessary to also point out that manpower and wages are not mentioned in the mandate letter? They haven’t quite figured out that morale, quality of life and optimism are directly linked to these issues.

Are we making too much of this mandate letter? Is this the thin edge of the knife?

The concern of course is that there has always been a curtain drawn, a line not crossed when it comes to the relationship between the police and the State. Goodale even makes reference to “police independence” in the beginning of the letter. However in real terms policing is at a crossroads. In the U.S. Donald Trump is trying to wrest control and direction of the FBI with political shenanigans only impeded by a robust 5th Estate, and an unwilling to go along attitude of the Justice Department and the FBI themselves.

Has Canada, the docile and compliant country that we are, now entered into a relationship between the police and the state which is a little too close for a properly running democracy? Have we now rolled over and woken to a new political RCMP, one wholly directed and run by the authorities?

Has that line been crossed? Is Commissioner Lucki now no different than the other Ministers who rely on the government of the day for their survival?

Maybe we are reading too much into it. Maybe the RCMP bureaucracy is so stultified that nothing will ever get done, maybe we can rely on bureaucratic incompetence to keep us safe.

But there is little doubt the RCMP is teetering, in fact it may be too late. It may have already become a fully engulfed political institution, part of government, not separated from it, no longer an ethical divide between them and the governing party of the day.

In the end the ultimate winner may be Commissioner Lucki herself.

After all, if she succeeds in pleasing her political masters in the next few years and if the Trump of the north continues to reign, who knows, maybe the Liberals will make her a Senator too; for a job well done of course, a job done as directed.

Photo Courtesy of Flickr Commons by elPadawan Some Rights Reserved

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Rats”

Posted on by Pete Cross

This is not a reference to vermin, although likely that this is where the mind should first go, unless of course you’re a jaded police officer.

What is being referred to here is the person class of rat, the Donnie Brasco or Watergate “deep throat” types; people who are motivated usually by three broad and not always singular reasons– self preservation, conscience, or self-interest. They are motivated to give over confidential information, in the street vernacular, they are motivated to “rat” on someone.

And for those holier than thou types, who say that they would never tell on someone, you better think again. Everyone, given the right circumstances has the potential to be a “rat”, or if you like the more gentle term, a “confidential informant”.

For instance, the Canada Revenue Agency this year had 32,157 “leads” from their “snitch line” in 2017/2018, a phone line where Canadians can anonymously call on their neighbours and friends and tell on them, “snitch’ on them for cheating on their taxes.

Informants are everywhere, in every facet of society, dwelling below the surface, just out of sight.  They thrive in  the political, corporate, cyber, and the military world.

Donald Trump, exuding his mafia don persona recently called Michael Cohen, his one-time lawyer, a “rat”, for his cooperation with the Mueller investigation.

There are many in the American military who blame the misguided incursion into Iraq looking for “weapons of mass destruction” on the fact that the CIA and NSA relied too heavily on technical resources– that they had allowed human sources to fall out of favour, neglected them and replaced them with the sexier uses of technology such as drones or telecommunications intercepts.

This is all a rather large preamble to the main point.  In policing, especially in the drug, gang and homicide world, the police need informants. It is not the use of forensics, or searches of criminal data bases that in the end usually provide the needed link. It is human informants who prove themselves invaluable; able to solve crimes, or at least put one in a position to solve the crime, often at a fraction of the cost, often saving hundreds of investigational hours chasing links and leads.

The police should be learning from the likes of the NY Times or the Washington Post who clearly have developed informants inside the Trump White House in remarkable numbers, people informing at the highest level of government, possibly committing economic and political suicide if caught.

Effective policing simply can not survive or thrive without informants. They need rats and they need to cherish and cultivate those rats.

The decline and decimation of the solvency rate in IHIT maybe the lack of human informants who are almost non-existent according to this writer’s sources.  In the last number of years, the police have fallen in love with the technical; DNA, video, cellphone call records.  It is where junior and in-experienced officers tend to gather, as they have not had the time or the inclination to pay the time and price of human source development. Homicide investigations conducted over a laptop. Not that these other avenues are not valuable, but they are not comparable to the value of a good informant.

There are a couple of reasons for this, and it can not all be blamed on the officers themselves.

The first is that the politically correct RCMP and the current managers of the RCMP run from controversy, run from anything which could harm or impede their pristine career path. Doing nothing seems to be the historical creed of many a bureaucrat for the last many years. The 21st century of political politeness has created an environ that is loath to the risk taker, the person willing to go out on the proverbial limb, willing to justify a more precarious position in the interests of the better good.

Rather than develop informants with their inherent risks (and admittedly there are a lot of risks) they would rather barricade themselves from it. In extreme cases they have turned away from solving a crime in order to keep their slate clean. Policing is an often risky business in terms of its operations and decision making , whether it is to force entry into a house, or launch an investigation into a high profile agency or business. There is no room for the feint of heart.

Why is there no criticism of this beyond cautious approach? They get away with it because the file investigations are hidden, out of the public view. No one is ever the wiser. The only peek into the effectiveness of human sources maybe when and if you examine solvency stats. In its early formation IHIT had a solvency rate of around 70%, currently in 2018 they are at a staggering 5 or 6%. Surrey and Vancouver are the gun and gang vortexes, making up almost 80 % of the files, solvency is dependent on knowing who are the players, you need inside information.

The RCMP put so many barriers to protect themselves that running an informant, having them approved for use, or paying an informant has become a bureaucratic byzantine nightmare. And if you want to go one step further, and turn this informant into an “agent” then be prepared for a lengthy, paper-intensive, time-consuming, all encompassing questioning of the need for that informant. (An agent is one who is being directed by the police to get involved with a criminal group, such as wearing a “wire”–but in doing so there is a legal responsibility for the informant that makes the police responsible for their financial and physical well-being.)

The second primary reason for this issue, is even a little more unnoticeable. For the formative years of IHIT, the officers becoming part of the group had many years experience, had come up through the ranks and trenches, coming up through the uniform ranks, working on the “streets”. And it is there, that informants are gardened and ripe for picking. It is on the streets, when dealing with the drug dealers, the prostitutes, the gang types that one begins to develop a rapport whether it be through normal interaction, or through arrests and releases. The cellblocks are the Tinder like atmosphere which produces potential informants on a daily basis. Currently the RCMP has told their officers that they are not allowed to cultivate informants who are “in custody” as ludicrous as that sounds to experienced investigators.

Having informants is a dirty job for an investigator. It is a tedious and prolonged effort. The relationships develop over months and years. One does not get a good informant in one meeting, in fact numerous approaches to many people are needed to develop one good informant. (For awhile the RCMP had a unit whose sole job was to parachute into a file, and develop an informant for the investigators–this of course showed an amazing lack of sophistication and knowledge of how informants are built and it ended in failure)

The vast majority of current candidates for the IHIT group are younger, with minimal amounts of service, sometimes less than five years, a situation almost unheard of many years ago. They have not matured as investigators, let alone time to develop those informants. They get parachuted in from Richmond for example to IHIT and they will likely get their first file experiences in in Surrey or Burnaby.

So where does this leave us?  The model has to change, experience and longevity need to count once again in homicide units.  These units need to be a place where seasoned investigators want to go, where one is rewarded for their longevity.

And most of all, there needs to be a realization from the management of the RCMP that if they truly want to be operationally effective, they need to allow their officers the ability to take risks. Recognize those abilities, recognize the value and the time and effort that is required. Realize that there are informants that will go sideways, that will bring negative comment.

It will solve crimes but maybe the question to ask is whether the solving of crimes is a priority anymore.

“You have to bring an informant in, convince him or her that your bed is warmer and safer than the one the informer is currently sleeping in. You have to be a friend, but not too friendly, you have to make promises, but none that you can’t deliver. You have to keep your informants safe, but not hesitate to put them in mortal danger. You have to show them that there is a future beyond this, when you know there probably isn’t.”

– From ‘The Cartel’ by Don Winslow.

 

Photo Courtesy via Flickr Commons by jans canon Some Rights Reserved