After years of calls for better arming of RCMP officers with carbines, Mounties says more than 78 percent of frontline members are already trained in weapons, but it is unclear how evenly distributed these officers are across the country.
A carbine is a short-barreled rifle that has a longer accurate range than a small arms or rifle.
“The RCMP seems to be making up for some of the time lost in the initial implementation of the carbine program,” said Christian Leprecht, a professor at the Royal Military College and Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., Who specializes in police and security issues.
The issuance of RCMP officer carbines was a key recommendation of an expert report in 2010 following the 2005 tragedy in Myerthorpe, Alta, when four officers were killed.
A review of the 2014 Moncton shooting, in which three Mounties were killed and two wounded, revived the urgency of dropping more carbines on frontline officers.
The dead officers and two other wounded had no carbines. Instead, they had 9mm pistols.
As of this month, the RCMP has 6,650 carbines deployed to approximately 8,500 front line members across the country. That’s a big jump over the 1,500 carbines that were in use at the time of the Moncton shooting, according to RCMP spokesman Robin Percival.
During the mass shooting in Nova Scotia in April 2020, when 22 people were killed by a gunman, including Mountie, who was not trained in carbines, Percival said the RCMP had about 8,700 members on the front line and more than 5,700. carbines distributed throughout the country. country.
In December 2020, about eight months after the massacre in Nova Scotia, the RCMP updated its national standards to ensure that as many front-line officers as possible were qualified to use a carbine.
As part of these standards, Mounties set a standard that by March 31, 2022, at least 65% of the front line operatives in each unit will be trained in carbines.
Mounties will not share the detachment percentage
The RCMP declined to comment on their progress in this regard.
In an email Thursday, Percival said they could not destroy the RCMP’s ability to respond to units, areas or units for security reasons.
“These opportunities cannot be made public, as they provide information on what type of reaction / tactics RCMP staff have – potentially putting both the public and the police at risk,” Percival said.
As of April 1, 2022, at least 72% of RCMP members in Nova Scotia, where Mounties is engaged with frontline police, have been trained in carbines, but it is not clear where these officers are located in the province.
RCMP staffing challenges affect training: expert
Percival said that nationally, 78.4% of all members of the Canadian front line have also been trained in carbines since April 1.
The broader problem is that the RCMP is understaffed at the national level, Leuprecht said, so the organization faces difficult choices about where to deploy people, training and the equipment it has.
But Leuprecht said RCMP staff are “disproportionately at risk” as they often work in rural areas, where officers are also more likely to be injured or killed in the line of duty.
“The RCMP has a disproportionate interest in ensuring that its members have the necessary equipment,” Leuprecht said.
“Your backup can be far away, unlike municipal areas, where your backup is minutes away.”
Christian Leprecht is a security and defense expert who teaches at the Royal Military College of Canada and Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. (Submitted by Christian Leuprecht)
Leprecht said he would “not be surprised” if lower-rate units fell in areas furthest from the shooting range.
While some larger police forces may have shooting ranges in their basement, making it easier for members to complete their annual retraining for rifles, Leprecht said, in many parts of the country, Mounties have to drive for hours to reach a range.
“So you are removing a member from a shift, and many of these units are already understaffed,” Leprecht said.
cap. Rodney Peterson of the Biblical Hill Squad, which responded to the April 19 mass shooting and passed by the shooter that morning, told investigators from the commission leading the investigation that he had been trained as a firearms instructor.
He completed the instructor course while in the nearby Millbrook Squad, and Peterson said the goal is for full-time members to receive firearms training and qualifications throughout the year.
“Unfortunately, I was not able to make many instructions because we were short of staff,” Peterson told the committee.
Const. Ron Kennedy of the Charlottetown Police was seen with a carbine in 2017. The RCMP says that by April 2022, 78 percent of all their strength has been trained with carbines, but will not break the numbers by specific divisions. (Brian Higgins / CBC)
Those patrol members, who are always outside the community, “should be given priority” in carbine certificates and always have them in their cars, Leuprecht said.
With many municipal forces in urban areas, Leprecht said it was “quite standard” to see patrol officers have carbines and bulletproof vests in their vehicles.
These tools are vital in active shooter situations, Leuprecht said, because the best strategy is to immediately engage the shooter and try to master them.
The ongoing public investigation into the mass shooting in Nova Scotia has heard that Const. Heidi Stevenson, who was killed by a gunman in Shubenakadie after engaging in a shootout with him, was not trained to fire a carbine.
Brian Sove, president of the National Police Federation (NPF), said it didn’t matter because Stevenson had dealt with the shooter at close range, so her service pistol was her best option anyway.
The NPF represents thousands of RCMP members under the rank of inspector.
Other NS officers not trained in carbines in 2020
Leuprecht said that in this particular circumstance, this is probably true, but carbines are a standard problem in most medium and large municipal police forces in Canada “precisely because it is difficult to predict when and where you may find yourself in a situation where you may a carbine is needed to ensure the safety of society or your own safety.
“You don’t want to show up with a shooting knife,” Leuprecht said.
Apart from Stevenson, other RCMP officers who responded to the mass shooting were not trained to use carbines.
These include const. Vicki Colford of the Biblical Hill Squad, who was one of the first RCMP officers at the Portapic scene on April 18, and Capt. Natasha Jamieson of Millbrook, who also responded that evening.
Peterson was trained in the carbine, but it is not clear from his interviews with police and the commission whether he had a carbine in his car.
Sauvé of the police union said in a recent interview that rifle training is considered mandatory for the RCMP as it is encouraged for all officers on duty, but “everyone and not everyone can take every course”.
The RCMP aims for 80% over the next 3 years
“If you can go through it, if the resources allow it to happen and we have the ability to take you through this course, then we will take you through this course. That’s a plus,” Sauvé said.
By 2025, Percival said the percentage of front-line officers trained in carbines would grow steadily until each RCMP unit reached at least 80 percent.
Leuprecht said reaching 100 percent is probably not a useful goal, as there will always be a number of officers who do not need qualification for carbines, such as those in the management, working undercover or seconded abroad as liaisons.
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