Province orders City of Surrey to stick with transition to municipal police force

The province has ordered the City of Surrey to continue its transition to the Surrey Police Service (SPS), despite the new council’s plan to revert to the RCMP.

Solicitor General Mike Farnworth said in a release Wednesday that the move to the RCMP could have caused a “crisis in policing” as the city failed to prevent an exodus of SPS officers.

Farnworth also said the city failed to demonstrate they could staff the Surrey RCMP without pulling RCMP officers from other communities, noting the organization is already experiencing a critical staffing shortage across the province and the country.

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RCMP grapples with calls for change, shifting role as it turns 150

Put him in a dress, problem solved

OTTAWA — As the RCMP marks its 150th anniversary, a familiar, nagging question about the storied national police force is resurfacing: Should the Mounties withdraw from small communities across Canada to fully concentrate on big-ticket federal files such as cybercrime, fraud and human trafficking?

Lucki and Junior decisided to politicize the RCMP. It will be difficult to reverse public opinion.

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Confidential report reveals untold story of Cameron Ortis, RCMP’s troubled national intelligence centre

Senior RCMP officials were hoping to bring their national intelligence program to “the next level” when they put Cameron Ortis in charge, according to an independent review conducted following his arrest.

Hoping to boost their reputation with international partners like the FBI, the RCMP made Ortis director-general of the National Intelligence Coordination Centre and told him to begin an overhaul.

They also wanted Ortis, a civilian with a PhD, to begin using highly classified information to improve the quality of RCMP intelligence, the review found.

No wonder Canada is an international pariah.

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RCMP’s recruitment plight could threaten its ability to do its job, advisory board warns

The RCMP’s recruitment situation can be described accurately as a crisis, says the force’s independent advisory board — one that could threaten its ability to serve as Canada’s national police force.

That’s the conclusion of a report by the Management Advisory Board, an oversight body that advises the RCMP commissioner, following a review of the RCMP’s cadet training program. The report was written by a board task force focused on the issue of training.

The report, shared with CBC News, recommends an overhaul of what cadets are taught at the RCMP’s depot in Regina to keep pace with modern policing.

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RCMP work-from-home policy caused case against alleged ChiCom asset at Agriculture Canada to fall apart, court document reveals

Delays caused by the RCMP’s work-from-home directives in the early days of the pandemic are the reason for the collapse of a criminal case against a former Agriculture Canada scientist who was accused of illegally taking payments from China.

The Saskatchewan RCMP arrested the scientist, Yantai Gan, in November, 2019, and he stopped working for the federal government shortly afterward. He was charged with breach of trust by a public official, as well as fraud.

Now this is so stupid you have to wonder if the fix was in.

h/t OJ

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IN-DEPTH: RCMP Shares New Details on Pipeline Attacks by ‘Anarchist’ Protesters

The RCMP has shared new information regarding masked, axe-wielding protesters who descended on a Coastal GasLinks pipeline worksite in Houston, British Columbia, in February last year.

The RCMP has not yet made arrests—and has said little about the investigation since—but Chief Supt. John Brewer told The Epoch Times recently that they have suspects and they have been building up strong evidence against them for more than a year in the hopes of presenting “the best investigative package” to ensure a likely conviction.

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When Mounties Pose as Mobsters, Some Canadians Cry Foul

A con game that undercover police use to obtain confessions in Canada secures convictions, but opponents say it’s a breeding ground for false confessions.

The police were hot on his trail for two murders and when pressured by the leader of his new gang to explain what he’d done, Trestan Brown confided in her. He figured he could trust her. She was, after all, a fellow criminal.

“Be up front with me and I’ll take care of you,” the gang leader, Steph, told Mr. Brown in a hotel room along the lakefront of Kingston, Ontario, according to court records.

So Mr. Brown, who is now 30, confessed, describing his role in the 2016 shooting deaths of two men in the Toronto area — and soon found himself under arrest.

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Lucki’s gun call wasn’t political interference but new rules are needed: N.S. mass shooting report

A report on the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia says then-RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki’s infamous call to local Mounties was “ill-timed and poorly expressed” — but did not amount to political interference.

The sprawling report calls for clearer guardrails between Ottawa and the RCMP, saying last summer’s scandal “illustrates that misunderstandings about police operational responsibility and ministerial policy responsibility persist within the RCMP and in broader public conversation in Canada.”

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Canada mass shooting inquiry identifies many police failings

TRURO, Nova Scotia (AP) — A public inquiry has found widespread failures in how Canada’s federal police force responded to the country’s worst mass shooting and recommends that the government rethink the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s central role in the country’s policing.

In a seven-volume report released Thursday, the Mass Casualty Commission also says the RCMP missed red flags in the years leading up to the Nova Scotia rampage that resulted in 22 people being slain April 18-19, 2020 by a denture maker disguised as a RCMP officer and driving a replica police vehicle.

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RCMP not investigating foreign interference in Vancouver’s 2022 election, despite CSIS report

The RCMP is not investigating foreign interference in Vancouver’s election last year, despite a Canadian intelligence report that China’s consul-general sought to shape the outcome of that vote.

The report from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service describes Tong Xiaoling, then China’s chief representative to the West Coast city, as saying that “they needed to get all eligible voters to come out and elect a specific Chinese-Canadian candidate,” in the mayoral race, while also assessing a specific person to “groom” as a councillor.

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RCMP phone tracking continues despite privacy concerns

The RCMP in the Lower Mainland have continued to use a tool that allows investigators to track suspects based on the location of their cellphones, despite failing to finalize a policy on how to address significant privacy issues raised about the technology.

Documents obtained through an access-to-information request that took more than 18 months show that between July, 2015, and March, 2021, the RCMP used the Stingray-type technology 112 times, with 57 per cent of those deployments being for drug investigations. The documents included copies of the RCMP’s 2017 interim policy on the use of the technology and a 2020 draft policy.

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RCMP watchdog investigates how B.C. police unit handles resource project protests

OTTAWA – The RCMP watchdog has launched a systemic investigation of the British Columbia unit that polices anti-logging and pipeline protests, just as a proposed class-action lawsuit is filed in court over the actions of those officers.

Michelaine Lahaie, chairperson of the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, says in a statement that the investigation will look into the activities and operations of the RCMP “E” Division Community-Industry Response Group.

Based on the Coastal GasLink incident my impression is that the RCMP do as little as possible.

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Years after scientists fired from Winnipeg infectious disease lab, RCMP still investigating

Justin Trudeau Xiangguo Qiu Keding Cheng – Everybody say Xi

The RCMP says it’s still investigating two scientists ejected from Canada’s top infectious disease lab almost four years ago, sparking debate about whether the force is up to the task — or the government is committed to seeing through the potentially embarrassing case.

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