The Middlin' Mountie

RCMP Commissioner William Elliott is stepping down. He will not be missed.

It is perhaps a sign of how poorly William Elliott fared in his tenure as RCMP commissioner that this Toronto Star editorial describing him as a man with “a short fuse, no police experience, a penchant for secrecy and a habit of rubbing officers the wrong way” also contains the kindest words written about him in the op-ed pages recently. Elliott announced last week that he will step down this summer after nearly four years at the post, and the Star obviously feels some sympathy for him. “In fairness to the veteran Ottawa bureaucrat — the first civilian to command the RCMP — he faced a daunting task” in cleaning up the force, the Star says. “He does deserve credit for making some progress in cleaning up the internal mess he inherited and tightening up the rules for Taser use, albeit belatedly.” But even the Star’s sympathetic editors conclude it is time for Elliott to go and for the government to appoint someone else to reform “the proud, but poorly-led, Mounties.”

The Vancouver Sun’s Ian Mulgrew is much less charitable in his assessment of both Elliott and the RCMP, calling the commissioner “a disappointment” and the force “a 19th-century military relic.” He has some specific recommendations for modernizing the RCMP, including ending the Mounties’ policy of sending trainees to remote outposts, establishing meaningful oversight procedures, and nixing agreements the force has to do policing for municipalities and provinces. The writers of The Mark Newsroom are no experts in the policing field of course, but it’s Mulgrew’s latter suggestion that resonates the most with us because we’re struck by the incredibly wide variety of things the RCMP has screwed up: the Air India bombing investigation, the tasering death of Robert Dziekanski, the tragic Mayerthorpe incident, sexual misconduct allegations, and stunning disorganization in the upper ranks, to name a few. To the extent that eliminating the RCMP’s provincial policing duties would mean shrinking the force, we think it’s a very good idea indeed. Why give an organization that is clearly in disarray so much responsibility?