RCMP should not relax recruitment rules

On Friday March 27, the CBC reported the Royal Canadian Mounted Police intend to relax their recruitment rules in order to fill an anticipated need for 2,000 more officers in the coming few years!
The report stated the RCMP are experiencing difficulty attracting new members, and that applicants with minor charges in the past, will now be considered for enrollment.
Among those expressing concerns about this plan is former Vanouver Mayor, one time Vancouver coroner, and ex-mountie Larry Campbell. Campbell’s major concern is the new rules are apparently not clear enough!
My concerns are much greater, and more widespread. And while I agree that a person with a minor conviction, such as possession of a small amount of marijuana, should not be automatically rejected, I do not believe this is the time for the RCMP, or any other police force, to relax recruitment rules.
In fact, if anything, police forces should be making their rules of recruitment more stringent, especially when it comes to education, esperience, psycological and aptitude testing.
One need look no further than the Braidwood Inquiry into the taser death of a Polish immigrant at Vancouver International Airport, or the tasering of an 82 year old in a nursing home, to realize there is a serious problem with police recruitment.
Clearly, from their testimony at the Braidwood inquiry, the four police officers involved in the Vancouver airport tasering are not the sort of individuals who ever should have become police officers. And despite police claims that tasering an 82 year old nursing home patient was warranted, any person who finds such an action justifiable, or necessary, should not be a police officer. One must wonder how police officers dealt with such situations prior to the advent of the taser.
While much ado is being made about whether or not tasers should be used at all, the real issue is the taser users, not the taser itself. Quite simply, it takes a finger to pull the trigger, and its the individual that finger belongs to, who should be put under scrutiny, not the trigger!
If anything, police forces in this country, and around the world, should be focussed on improving the quality of people they attract, not loosening the prerequisites. Anyone applying to become a police officer should have to clearly demonstrate superior skills and ability when it comes to issues such as honesty, mental stability, conflict resolution, emotional, mental an physical well being, social consciousness and personal integrity.
The real problem in policing is quality, not quantity. Relaxing recruitment rules will do nothing to resolve the crisis in policing, and may well serve to further exasperate what has become, by all accounts, a critical problem.
Another issue here is attracting the right personnel. With all that has gone down at the Braidwood Inquiry, and in other police related inquiries and lawsuits across the country, one can easily see why police departments are experiencing difficulty attracting good candidates. Who on earth would want to become a police officer at a time when the policing has become among the least trusted and respected professions in the country? To relax the rules now, only serves to deepen the mistrust and suspicion.
One of the first things that needs to happen, to restore public faith in the police, if for the police themsleves to do something to restore public trust. The bad seed must be sorted and removed, yes, but even more, the good seed must be identified, nurtured, and encouraged. Step one in that process would be for the police, especially the RCMP, to come clean. And it won’t be enough to simply fire the officers involved in the taser death at Vancouver airport. Moreso, there needs to be a total change in the “us against them” culture inherent in most police forces. To that end, every police force in this country needs to, without delay, open itself to public scrutiny and immediately put an end to the practice of self-investigation. When cops do wrong, the last people who should investigate them is other cops!
Another action that needs to be taken is to immediately require all potential recruits to have some sort of advanced education before qualifying for recruitment. One should have at least a BA in forensics, criminology, social work, law or other related field before qualifying. What’s more, preference should be given to those with even higher education, or a lengthy history in community service, combined with a degree. Such an action would of course require police forces to increase salaries, benefits and other renumeration, in order to attract the more qualified candidates. However, this is where quality over quantity comes into play. Better qualified police will reduce then need for more police!
Lets take the Vancouver airport incident as an example. One officer, with the ability to speak Polish, and some background in human psychology, would most certainly been able to resolve the issue there without the need for any force at all. Instead, four ill-trained officers, with no apparent cultural sensitivity, took less than a few minutes to unnecessarily kill a man who was simply frustrated, tired, and unable to communicate.
Another issue requiring urgent redress when it comes to police recruitment, is the source of the recruits. It is high time police forces in this country started recruiting officers from the communities where they will eventually serve. These recruits should be people who have garnered respect in thier home communities, and who have earned the trust of the people they will eventually serve. This is particularly true of the RCMP, who have engaged in a practice of cycling their officers out of the communities where they live every few years, much to the force’s detriment. The RCMP do this in order to prevent their officers from becoming to entrenched in the communities they serve, and to better enable them to assign officers to unpopular locations. But the real problem is in the quality of the recruits. If more well-suited individuals are recruited, then the RCMP won’t have to worry so much about their members becoming corrupted through entrenchment. If they are recruiting from the communities they will eventually serve, those recruits will be only too happy to serve where they live.
There’s an old adage; Sugar attracts more favourable results than vinegar. To that end, the police need to rethink the whole para-military approach to law enforcemnt that has become so prevelant over the past few decades. This is not to say we don’t need SWAT specialists, terror specialists, an organized crime units. However, there is a crisis in public confidence in policing that will not be resolved if the current focus on militarism persists. Police forces need to stop giving lip service to the concept of “community policing” and start actually practicing it.
When I was a kid, the cops in my hometown walked the beat. We all knew them by name, and they knew us by name. If your car broke down, they’d stop and help you get going again. If a woman was struggling up the street with a load of groceries, the beat cop would help her out. If there was dispute on the corner, the cop would do what he could to help resolve it. If the police are ever to regain public confidence, then they will need to begin to revert to practices that put them in touch with the people, and the people in touch with the police. Today, the police are feared more than respected. It should be the other way around, but it won’t get there until the police begin to do something to realistically change that perception. And of itself, such a change, would go a long way to helping with recruitment. When police once again become the servants of the people, the friend of the people, then people will once again become friends to the police. When police become people the people look favourably upon, perhaps the people will begin to view becoming police officers as a favourable profession.
Unfortunately, relaxing the rules of recruitment, while it may fill the seats at the academy, is only going to result in those seats being filled by people who really ought not become police officers. And that, my friends, is a scary thought.