No Easy Ride: Reflections on My Life in the RCMP (23 page)

My own tour of Depot as an instructor had concluded just prior to the introduction of female recruits. When I returned in 1980, the changes were obvious, even though the co-ed academy was still a recent development and the first female instructor was yet to arrive. Perhaps this was the reason for the occasional regression of attitude on the part of the male instructors.

Reg Potsby, the sergeant in charge of the law unit, viewed himself as a “liberated man,” but his occasionally lascivious comments during lectures clearly displayed a chauvinistic bent. One of the older and worldlier female recruits had a curious artistic ability; she could fashion the most life-like human penises from nylon stockings. While not a skill in great demand, it was a source of hilarity among the female troops. The corporals assigned to the law unit learned of this talent and asked her to fashion a gigantic one. Unbeknownst to Sergeant Potsby, an elaborate suspension system was fashioned along the upper portion of the chalkboard at the front of his classroom. While the sergeant was waxing eloquent in front of a female class, the large penis, controlled from outside the classroom, was pulled across the room on the string, coming to rest above him. Potsby’s audience fell into hysterical laughter, gesturing toward the object sitting just above the sergeant’s head. Even though he appeared to enjoy the stunt, Potsby lost control of the class and had to dismiss his students early. His mischievous corporals had second thoughts in weeks to come when they encountered drawers glued shut, false memos indicating their transfers to Inuvik and phone calls from a local escort service. As is so often the case in such situations, the boss always wins; however, in retrospect, I can see that the incident prompted the sergeant to reconsider his demeanour with female students.

EACH SPRING SAW
a new crop of instructors arrive from the field as senior members rotated back to operational duties. The arrival of a constable from Montreal exemplified how unprepared the RCMP were in dealing with members surfacing from undercover duties. Brad Dalton had been performing undercover work in Montreal for about two years, participating in a large and complex drug operation. There is perhaps no other duty in police work that takes such a psychological toll. While undercover, agents must eat, live and breathe in the most primitive conditions. Their lives are constantly in danger, particularly if their true identities are discovered. When undercover members surface, they are dirty, dishevelled, disoriented and traumatized. After Dalton’s undercover assignment ended, it was felt that his life was in danger, so instead of having the opportunity to debrief and rehabilitate, he was immediately transferred to the training division.

Dalton was expected to present himself as a squeaky-clean role model for recruits, but his classroom demeanour soon revealed how unsuited he was for a training environment. His mannerisms disturbed his recruit students. While he quickly assumed all the physical requirements of an ideal instructor, dressing smartly, replete with gleaming leather and impeccable grooming, his language was coarse, sometimes peppered with obscene street jargon. Senior management members were shocked by Dalton’s behaviour and moved to intervene. When they made preparations to remove him from his teaching role, I spoke on his behalf, reminding them of the young man’s background and outlining the trauma of protracted undercover operations. Although his promotion to corporal was deferred, Dalton was permitted to remain on staff. He was closely supervised and tutored over a period of time. He eventually curbed his raunchy tongue and slowly began to behave in a more acceptable manner.

I realized some years later that I had overlooked symptoms of post-traumatic stress manifested by another instructor, Grant Lortie. But I wasn’t the only one. Trained psychologists working in the academic section, along with many of the man’s peers who had training in human behaviour, also failed to identify what Lortie was experiencing. Lortie had been stationed on a municipal detail in Nanaimo, British Columbia. One evening while he was assigned to the detachment complaint desk, a co-worker had arrested an individual for impaired driving. When released, the citizen went home and returned to the detachment with a 12-gauge shotgun concealed under his overcoat. He entered the office and stood at the complaint counter. When Constable Lortie approached him, the man pulled the shotgun from his coat and fired, striking Lortie in the abdomen. Seriously injured, Lortie managed to talk the assailant into dropping his gun. After a brief exchange, the shooter seemed to regret his actions and even drove Lortie to the hospital for treatment. He was quickly taken into custody and arrested for attempted murder.

Lortie arrived at the Academy some years later, having physically recovered from his wound. He was the epitome of a policeman—six foot three inches tall, well built and very impressive in uniform. He was also a capable instructor and considered to be one of the comers in the section. Although he projected well in the classroom and was highly respected by his troops, Lortie was closed and uncommunicative with peers and supervisors. I monitored each instructor annually, attending one of their presentations and then debriefing them. It gave me an opportunity to question them on their careers and aspirations. During my interviews with Lortie, he was tense, answering questions in a terse manner and offering little from his personal perspective. It was obvious that he wanted to terminate the interview as soon as possible. When I talked about his potential and the possibility of his pursuing extra education, Lortie’s responses were muted, making it difficult to establish any rapport with him. He continued to perform his job in an exemplary fashion and rotated out after his three years at the Academy.

Corporal Lortie returned to operational duties in British Columbia, and the occasional news I would receive about him was not favourable. Several years later, I learned that Lortie’s marriage had failed. He had also been subject to a service investigation after refusing to wear his sidearm on duty and been found derelict in responding to a public complaint. The details related to me seemed highly out of character. Lortie subsequently retired, never rising above the rank of corporal. It was a most disappointing end to a career that had once appeared so promising. Following his retirement, Lortie settled in a remote community and became reclusive. I later learned that one of his daughters, a registered psychiatric nurse, always suspected her Dad was concealing unresolved issues. She finally persuaded her father to release his demons, and he disclosed that he was haunted by the shooting incident. No therapy or counselling had been offered to him after the event, as the Force was just becoming aware of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and little assistance was in place for shooting incident survivors. Corporal Lortie finally received some psychiatric help and a disability pension. In retrospect, it was obvious he was a casualty of a stressful occupation that failed to provide the necessary compassionate attention. This unfortunate history emphasizes the absolute necessity for supervisors in high-risk occupations such as law enforcement to be proactive when it comes to dealing with the trauma their employees are experiencing. In recent years, the Force has implemented many positive changes in the debriefing of members returning to uniform duty from undercover work and in the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD.

IN TODAY’S RCMP ACADEMY,
computers are ubiquitous and instructors engage in animated classroom exchanges with students, who are encouraged to debate and doubt. Spearheaded by a cadre of talented, educated junior NCOs, the human-relations program has grown from the modest 18 hours first proposed in the early 1970s to over 200 hours, with successful candidates receiving university credits from the University of Regina. It is gratifying to know that I was involved in introducing this vital facet of police training, and it was icing on the cake to return to the Academy a second time and expand the program further.

Cynical veterans still denigrate the human-relations program and training in general, as they have done since the inception of the Force in 1873. Each successive generation seems to believe that current basic training is never as tough or as good as that experienced by the previous old guard. Even after the physically cruel experience of my own era, we encountered veterans who assured us that their horses were tougher and their instructors meaner than anything we had to contend with.

Current RCMP training puts greater emphasis on academia, but the physical-training and driver-training sections are equally important. The primary objective in contemporary police training is the dovetailing of all disciplines, and much of the basic recruit-training curriculum now appears under the umbrella of “Applied Police Sciences.” There is no tolerance for individual sections teaching solely to their course training standards and ignoring everything else in the curriculum. One thing has not changed, however: there are never enough hours in the day for recruits. Interestingly, expectations of performance are higher than ever. The setting and achieving of personal goals are paramount in today’s RCMP Academy.

Although it has been many years since my tenure at the RCMP Academy, there is still a family connection to this day. My daughter, Michelle, who has degrees in social work, is an assistant supervisor working within the Saskatchewan Ministry of Justice, Young Offender Programs, Corrections and Policing. Michelle lectures to RCMP recruits about her role in the justice system dealing with law enforcement relating to young offenders.

As my tour at the Academy came to an end, I was seriously looking toward retirement from the Force and considering a different line of work. While I was considering my future, my supervising officer approached me about competing for a Queen’s Commission, the door that leads to senior management of the Force. The officer corps has always been steeped in tradition and mystique. For years, admission into this exclusive upper echelon was likened to being knighted. We were all conditioned to dream of the remote possibility of reaching this level. As members travelled the lengthy and arduous career highway, many abandoned hope of reaching this pinnacle. There were many reasons for this: lack of preparation, location, marital and family status and cynicism accrued through years of dealing with the flaws of humanity. Because of my father’s career, I’d had the opportunity to view the officer corps from the inside, and it held considerable appeal for me.

Historically, candidacy for senior NCOs into the officer corps was initiated by a recommendation from an officer. As the Force entered the 21st century, leaders began to realize that this procedure might not always identify the most appropriate candidates. Although, even today, qualifying for a commission still requires a recommendation by an officer, such a recommendation now follows a rigorous series of hurdles consisting of a four-hour written exam, a research paper and an appearance before a board of senior officers. The candidates, all seasoned RCMP veterans, complete the exam in various locations across the country. Members have been known to peruse this exam and walk out of the room in defeat, and some do not withstand the verbal inquisition of the officer candidate board. When I was a candidate, the aggressive demeanour of some of the officers resembled the approach of instructors of Depot past. To many of us, it was akin to once again running the gauntlet.

A complex points system is used to calculate a candidate’s total scores, with annual performance appraisals taken into account. Once the scores are computed, successful candidates are placed on a list and await the telephone call from a representative from Officer’s Staffing Branch in Ottawa. A candidate is first asked whether he or she is still mobile and willing to serve anywhere in Canada. If the response is affirmative, he or she receives a posting.

The Officer Candidate Program was extremely stressful for me. I considered with trepidation how I would be able to lead the dynamic young men under my command if I was not successful in my quest for a commission. In the years to follow, 10 out of these 33 members would compete in the Officer Candidate Program. Two became commanding officers, and one attained the level of deputy commissioner. The success rate of this single group from the academic section far surpassed the Force-wide average of 5 percent.

I was fortunate to place second out of 397 successful officer candidates. Once on the list, I waited, hoping for officer vacancies. For 12 months my standing vacillated between number 1 and number 3 as each new batch of officer candidates was added into the list. To complicate matters, this was the era when biculturalism and bilingualism became a priority of the federal government. Departments were urged to redress the imbalance of anglophone versus francophone leaders. The RCMP was no exception, and the commissioner of the day decided to bypass unilingual English officer candidates at the top of the list in favour of those who were bilingual. Incensed, I applied for the position of chief of police in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. After the initial competition, the department’s deputy chief and I remained as the final choices. The deputy won the position, and I continued to await my fate within the RCMP.