WE NEED MORE MOUNTIES

The Mounties are looking for recruits, but aren't getting their men,
apparently. Or their women.

As a consequence, a provincial document released to the Vancouver Sun
in response to a freedom of information request says, there haven't
been enough RCMP officers in B.C. to investigate some of the most
serious crimes in the province in the past decade, including
homicides, grow operations, home invasions, sexual predation and
high-level organized crime.

This is despite an announcement by Premier Gordon Campbell in May
that funds were being provided to add 215 officers in B.C.
communities. The funding is there, but the bodies are not, which
makes one wonder what the money is being used for.

Apparently investigators are being shuffled to fill gaps in special
teams, and vacancies are being filled by municipal police officers
seconded to an integrated joint-force unit of Mounties and municipal cops.

And as long-term officers retire -- some to take up other careers in
their early 50s -- the problem worsens.

Getting the Mounties to do the policing in communities with 5,000 or
fewer residents, at provincial expense, or to work on contract for
larger municipal forces such as in Surrey or Langley is a pretty good deal.

The RCMP takes raw recruits and trains them at their depot in Regina
to do real police work -- not just to stand around as ornaments in
red serge on Parliament Hill.

Some old-timers might regret the demise of this province's own force,
the B.C. Provincial Police, in 1950, but the federal contribution is
more valuable than nostalgia. Policing in this province today
involves more than patrolling traplines and stalking mining-claim jumpers.

Still, when the province provides more money for Mounties we expect
them to be produced.

We don't want to be taken for a musical ride.