QUESTION:
Dear Sgt. DeVries,
Thank you for your well-written, informative and engaging column.
Once again, the RCMP has borne the brunt of recent negative and damaging news stories regarding systemic sexual harassment in the force's internal culture and the criminal behaviour of disgraced former RCMP officer Monty Robinson. As you are not permitted to comment on these specific issues, my question to you is more philosophical: Could you please articulate to the community what motivated you to become an RCMP officer and describe why you are proud to be a member of the force?
Perhaps some of the public invective would soften if the members of the community were given an opportunity to peer inside the heart and mind of an RCMP Sergeant.
I sincerely welcome your response.
Max Wilkie,
North Vancouver
Dear Mr. Wilkie:
Thank you for your thoughtful question.
To be honest, I've always harboured a small knot of guilt about my reasons for becoming a cop. Many of my troopmates told inspiring stories about the years they spent dreaming of being in the RCMP, of applying, being denied, then applying again, and again, until finally, after years of trying they succeeded.
Others told romantic tales of admiring their local neighbourhood officer, fearless and kind, swaggering in her duty belt with a selfassured, quiet strength, and even at the young age of four or five saying to themselves, "one day- one day-"
Not so with me. In fact, the genesis of my perception of the police occurred when I almost started a forest fire. And then lied about it.
I was seven years old when I convinced my brother to help me start a small campfire in the fort we had built in the forest behind our cabin on Pender Island. All went well. Except for the part where we were supposed to put it out.
Apparently we hadn't learned that stomping on it, then piling dehydrated pine needles, dry branches and dead moss on the embers, is not the accepted method. I remember feeling anxious when, back at our cottage twenty minutes later, I heard the wailing siren of a fire truck lumbering up the street. Never mind the fear at seeing a pall of smoke rising from the trees.
But that wasn't the worst part. When the Island's lone RCMP officer came to our door to ask if we knew anything about the fire, I pointed my finger at Randall. Randall was another boy who lived up the street and whom we had always considered to be one of the bad kids. After all he had mooned us once. Clearly he was capable of arson.
But I was a terrible liar. And so, a sobbing police car ride and a sobering tour of the tiny Detachment's single jail cell later, I was thoroughly convinced that I would never be able to pull one over on a cop.
Sadly, my reasons for becoming a police officer weren't steeped in the higher virtues touched upon by that experience. In fact, my primary motivation was rather base: twenty-one years old, I wanted to chase bad guys and drive a cop car. Honest. I'm sorry if that bursts any bubbles, but it's true. Without doubt, many of our ranks took a more venerable approach, and I admire them for it. Alas, I did not.
Yet despite this, the job itself pushed me to more fully grapple with those ideals. In a sense, it forced me to find value and to invoke virtue in the difficult things I encountered. Chasing down a thief is sure thrilling, but once he's in handcuffs I'm always faced with how to talk to him, how to relate to his problems with drug addiction or childhood abuse. Above all, I am compelled by my conscience to consider how to show him compassion.
I have found that from a person's pain, from his discovery of an inconceivable tragedy or his choice to commit an awful misdeed can arise his most poignant moment of vulnerability. Right then, we are there. And although sometimes those fragmented moments consume us too, and in various ways lead us, in our own struggles, to make wrong decisions, in almost every case I believe we help. True, we can easily become inured; it is difficult to remain sensitive, to offer again and again some measure of healing, to imbue compassion. However, in meeting that challenge I find immense value.
Did the officer on Pender Island make that difference for me? I don't know. I suppose the way he dealt with me has left me with a sense of fairness about the whole ordeal. Perhaps that's the answer; in a world of unfairness, the police can help to rebalance the scales.
As for my career choice, maybe I should have become a firefighter. But then they don't get to chase the bad guys, do they?
Sgt. Peter DeVries, North Vancouver RCMP
Follow Peter on Twitter: @ rcmpdevries. If you have a question for Ask a Cop, email it to editor@ nsnews.com.
