POLICE SILENCE WON'T STOP CRIME

The RCMP Is Wrong In Its Belief That The Public Is Better Off Not Knowing

The RCMP in B.C. is concerned that too many people are afraid that
there's too much crime in the province.

The Mounties' conclusion appears to be that members of the force are
talking too much: They should cut down on the number of press
releases they issue and stop being so ready to answer reporters' questions.

Well, first of all, let's dispel the notion that the RCMP is free and
easy with information: Press releases, when they're issued, don't
typically reveal much beyond the fact the Mounties are investigating
something. Names, including those that have already been revealed by
family members and other sources, are often missing. Causes of death
can be carefully guarded even though they're pretty obvious to anyone
who has been at the scene.

The RCMP has become better at returning reporters' phone calls, but
seldom volunteers useful details. Investigations seem always to be
continuing, and while they are, mum's the word.

It wasn't always this way. Cop cars, lights flashing and sirens
wailing, used to slow down at the old Times and Colonist buildings to
pick up a reporter on the way to a major crime scene.

The old police radio was an invaluable assist in covering the police
beat. And so long as reporters didn't step all over the bodies before
they could be photographed, the cops were pretty co-operative.

It seems, though, that with all the advances in communications in
recent years has come increasing reluctance by the police to use them
to keep the public abreast of what's going on.

"Public comments made by RCMP media spokespeople -- although
well-meaning -- may actually be contributing to fear of crime rather
than reducing such fear," says an internal RCMP report obtained by
the Vancouver Sun through the Access to Information Act.

We appreciate the concerns of the force that we shouldn't be afraid
of crime. But surely the police priority should be to prevent crime
where possible, solve crimes that occur and that the Mounties
continue to get their man -- or woman.

It's a bureaucratic attitude, made up by people with filing cabinets
for minds, that information about public safety matters should be
released only on a need-to-know basis.

Invariably, the deciding interest is not that of the public but that
of those who serve it -- governments or the police themselves.
Secrecy can be used to hide malfeasance by those holding public
office or the incompetence of those enforcing laws to protect the public.

The Mounties have been known to be particularly hard on those members
who break their oaths of secrecy and blow the whistle. Lack of public
oversight led to barn-burnings, kidnapping and theft by members of
the RCMP in Quebec in the 1970s.

The chairwoman of the Commission for Public Complaints against the
RCMP complained last year that the force was trying to frustrate the
complaints process by refusing to release files.

Former Conservative justice critic, now Foreign Minister Peter
MacKay, declared there was a "culture of cover-up" in the "upper
echelons" of the RCMP.

The report made public Monday suggests the culture is seeping down
the ranks. Its harm is not what it does to the work of police
reporters but to the principle that the functioning of a democratic
society depends on an informed public.

What we know of our law-enforcement system cannot come to us only
through some Orwellian filter. And keeping us in the dark won't make
us less afraid of it.