Why some Manitoba communities are transitioning away from the RCMP
'Collaborative policing these days is really the model': SFU criminology professor
Const. Trevor Mitchell gets into a police car outside the new police detachment at Brokenhead Ojibway Nation and begins his daily routine.
The Manitoba First Nations Police officer says his day usually starts with quick patrols. After that, he often sets up on the highway crossing the community about 66 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg to watch for speeders during the morning commute.
It's quite a change of pace for a seasoned police officer who spent 22 years with the Winnipeg Police Service before joining MFNPS.
"You'll definitely get to know the residents as opposed to in a big major city where … you may never see the people again that you've dealt with," Mitchell said.
In Brokenhead, "They see you and they get to know your face. They're more comfortable in being able to approach the same person that they see over and over and over again."
In October, Brokenhead became the 10th community patrolled by MFNPS, which emphasizes a community response model. It's the kind of policing one expert says comes hard for the police service's predecessors in the First Nations community: the RCMP.
"The RCMP transfer policy, which has officers churning through detachments on a fairly regular basis, makes it very difficult for them to establish sustainable relationships," said Curt Griffiths, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University.
"We know that collaborative policing these days is really the model, that the police can't solve all issues themselves … The collaborative model is challenging in an RCMP detachment because of the turnover."
Griffiths, who's acted as a consultant with police departments all across Canada, was involved in the process that saw the Surrey Police Service in British Columbia take over from local RCMP this fall.
He says there are several reasons why an increasing number of communities are looking for alternatives to the RCMP, which currently serves First Nations, about 150 municipalities and all of Canada's provinces and territories except Quebec and Ontario.
"There's been increased … visibility of police issues and accountability," Griffiths said.
"It's very difficult for a municipality that's policed by the RCMP to have that governance and accountability and transparency. There's no police board, for example."
The MFNPS continues its push to expand beyond the six communities it served when it was established in the 1970s as the Dakota Ojibway Tribal Council Police Department.
'Culturally relevant and community focused'
MFNPS Chief Doug Palson says at least two more agreements are expected to be completed next year: Fisher River Cree Nation in the spring and Dakota Plains later in 2025.
"I think it stems from a desire to [have] a police service that maybe is more culturally relevant and community-focused, which we are," Palson said.
"The other important piece to remember is [our governance structure] … Every community that we police in actually has a say in the governance of the police service — not in the actual operations, but the overall direction."
Brokenhead Chief Gordon Bluesky says the service has a better understanding of the intergenerational impacts of colonization and people's origins.
"A lot of times that we felt not just under-serviced by external police services, but also in some cases [intimidated," he said.
However, Bluesky says, the decision ultimately boiled down to safety.
The Selkirk RCMP detachment that served Brokenhead is about 30 kilometres from the community, which welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors every year because of its casino, and suffers a high rate of drug activity.
The chief says the community had asked RCMP for increased patrols, but the demands weren't met.
CBC has reached out to the Mounties for comment.
"In the unfortunate case of the James Smith First Nation in Saskatchewan, I'm pretty sure we all now are aware of what 10, 15 minutes can do to a community," he said.
"Of course, we still have a lot of challenges as it relates to the drug issues in our community, but I honestly believe that the mood and the spirit and the vibe here in the community has changed quite a bit."
Staffing woes
Bluesky says the demands were likely not met because of a lack of resources on the RCMP's end, whose detachments all across the country chronically struggle with understaffing.
Heather Lamb, the mayor of the Rural Municipality of Riverdale northwest of Brandon, says that's become one of her chief concerns since Blue Hills RCMP took over policing in the community over the recently dissolved Rivers Police Department.
In a report issued to the rural municipality shortly after the takeover, Blue Hills RCMP said the detachment did not receive additional resources or staffing to make up for the fact it's now covering an area of nearly 5,700 square kilometres (2,200 square miles) and adding more than 3,000 residents.
The municipality said if this is a permanent arrangement, they need more RCMP officers.
"If you don't have a presence of police, crime moves in," Lamb said. "It's my concern as time goes on that crime will be increased in Riverdale, because …we've lost our community policing."
Griffiths says response times resulting from the understaffing was one of the reasons Surrey decided to dissolve the largest RCMP detachment in the country.
"What happened in Surrey is a very slow erosion of public trust in the police," he said. "There were a couple of critical events that happened where the RCMP … didn't show up organizationally and at some point there was a tipping point."
However, he added, doing so wasn't easy. The transition dragged on for four years and is still not fully completed.
"The obstacles that were put up to this transition were unfathomable," he said, citing the "organizational arrogance" that he says permeates the police service. "It rarely accepts responsibility for its mistakes, and I give you the example: How difficult is it for this organization to apologize for Nova Scotia — a simple, heartfelt apology?"
'High visibility, high consequence'
Griffiths says remote and rural communities have a "high visibility, high consequence" dynamic where, unlike cities, everything a police officer does is known to the community they serve.
Most of the MFNPS Brokenhead detachment's nine officers are not originally from the community, but it's currently looking for more recruits.
Bluesky said the plan is to turn Brokenhead's First Nation Safety Officer program into a MFNPS cadets program, meaning they would get formal police training.
"There's no better resources than the people that live and work here in the communities," added Sgt. Tyler Delaronde.
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