Dear Editor:
I write in response to Tessa Holloway's Sept. 30 story, Mayors Mull End to RCMP in North Van, and your editorial in the same issue, Show of Force.
During my police career, I was in charge of the Vancouver Police Internal Audit Unit. Also, I worked with "multiforce" audit teams under the direction of the attorney general conducting independent value-for-money audits of police departments.
The RCMP detachments, while subject to their own internal review, were not, and still aren't, subject to independent, external "value-for-money" examinations.
Without the ability to conduct independent audits of RCMP operations, how can taxpayers be sure they are getting value for money?
Even more important is the issue of accountability and transparency. Remember the handling of the Robert Dziekanski tragedy. Remember the first press release. Remember the investigators sent to Poland to dig up dirt on their victim. Remember the attempt to control the video. Remember the senior management emails and remember the "spin doctoring."
Finally, remember how the Vancouver Police handled the "Stanley Park Six": Chief Const. Jamie Graham not only answered the media's questions, he released all of the files and held nothing back; no "spinning," just the truth.
So here is my point: even if the RCMP opened their "books," which is unlikely, and savings were achieved through improved cost controls, but the force remained accountable and responsible to Ottawa first and to the community second, then our police taxes are wasted. Why? Because without direct community accountability and responsibility we have nothing more than private security.
Sir Robert Peel said it best: "Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence."
So the "police are the community and the community is the police" which means the police must be solely accountable and responsible to the community.
A British Columbia provincial police force should meet that standard. If the RCMP will not subordinate itself to the solicitor general, as the chief law enforcement officer of the province and through that office to the community it serves, then it's time for a change.
Douglas MacKay-Dunn, councillor, District of North Vancouver
