Gazette - Officer backup in small detachments

COVER - REMOTE AND NORTHERN POLICING

Flexibility the name of the game

by Caroline Ross

Ensuring adequate backup for officers in small detachments is challenging, but it’s not impossible, as experience across the RCMP has shown.

In December 2007, the RCMP announced a new backup policy that requires a minimum of two officers to attend calls involving violence, anticipated violence, domestic disputes, weapons, suspected weapons, subjects who pose a threat to self and others, or travel to areas where
communications are known to be deficient.

The policy upholds the RCMP’s occupational health and safety requirements under the Canada Labour Code and affirms long-standing force principles on backup procedures. But commanders in small detachments still face practical challenges: having two officers available for duty 24/7 isn’t easy when you have fewer than 10 members on staff and can’t sustain a
24-hour shift schedule.

“The smaller the detachment, the bigger the impact,” says Gord Dalziel, an RCMP Staff Relations Representative in British Columbia.

Of course, one solution is to increase the number of officers in small detachments, but that’s not always possible given provincial, territorial and municipal policing budgets.

Fortunately, commanders in these small detachments are an innovative lot. “The RCMP is so diverse across Canada, with so many different mandates, landscapes, logistics, and legislation,” says Insp Troy Lightfoot, officer in charge of RCMP Operational Programs. “Comm - anders across the force have developed a variety of different (backup) methods, each effective in its own context.”

Nunavut operates a relief unit that supplies replacement officers to any of the territory’s 25 small fly-in detachments when regular members depart for vacations, training or court. Saskatchewan is assessing options to amend and amalgamate detachment service zones across the province’s network of long, flat roads.

Other regions meet backup needs through community constable programs, contracts with municipal partners, or “hubbing” strategies that deploy centrally stationed resources to nearby “satellite” detachments.

But what happens when you command a two-person detachment and none of these options fit the bill? Then you revert to a situation where both officers are on permanent standby for the duration of their postings. “I’m on call 24 hours a day,” says Cpl Ben Sewell, commander of the two-person detachment in Beaver Creek, Yukon. “I can’t go hiking with my family. I can’t even enjoy a beer at dinner because I have to be available for duty.”

This option involves a significant degree of personal sacrifice, and it also raises concerns about officer well-being over the long term.

Cst Mike Simpson remembers the mental, physical and emotional strain that he and his lone partner encountered during a particularly busy period in Igloolik, Nunavut.

“I’ve never been as busy (as I was) that three weeks,” says Simpson. “My partner went on stress leave a few months later, and I was very close to being burned out. I was quite fatigued on all levels.”

In such cases, it’s incumbent on senior managers to regularly check in with frontline officers and ensure that backup requirements aren’t compromising officer or public safety.

“It’s a matter of getting out there, of picking up the phone to make sure that people are OK,” says C/Supt Marty Cheliak, commanding officer of the RCMP in Nunavut. Cheliak visits each of Nunavut’s 15 two-person detachments at least twice a year and keeps senior staff sergeants on call to support front-line officers at any time for any reason.

“The majority of managers are keenly aware of the need to balance resource costs with the safety of members and the public,” says Lightfoot, who previously commanded a small, isolated detachment in northern Labrador. “That’s the balancing act, and we do it quite well, I think. We’re not perfect, but we’re doing a fine job of providing safety to our members and the public.