RCMP TAKES DRUG-TRAINING TO U.S.

Mounties Planning Workshops In Phoenix, Arizona To Certify Officers In
Recognizing Impaired Drivers

The RCMP is preparing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to
send police officers to Phoenix for three weeks of training where
alcohol and drugs feature prominently and a bar is a hotel
requirement.

The Mounties are planning six workshops , each three weeks long, in
the Arizona city between April 2012 and March 2013 to train a few
hundred RCMP, provincial and municipal police officers from across the
country on recognizing and testing drug-impaired drivers.

Police say there's currently a dearth of officers in Canada with
expertise in spotting and catching drug-impaired drivers. The RCMP,
which administers the training of all Canadian police officers on drug
recognition, says Phoenix is the teaching hot spot and best place to
find high drivers in mass quantity.

The RCMP is calling for bids from hotels that can provide queen-or
king-sized beds for around 35 people for each three week training
session, amounting to 680 guest room nights for each workshop and a
total 4,080 room nights over the six sessions planned for Phoenix.
Each workshop will include around 24 officers for training, six
certified instructors and four to six additional officers practising
to be instructors.

A couple of meeting rooms, including one with an on-site bar, are also
required for training purposes. The force estimates the total hotel
tab will range between $100,000 and $250,000, according to its request
for proposals.

Sending more than 200 officers to Phoenix over the six training
sessions, with return flights from major Canadian cities ranging from
around $550 to $700, will likely add at least another $100,000 to the
total bill.

But RCMP officials say they're saving taxpayers potentially $120,000
by consolidating the training in one city this year.

"Bottom line is it's just cheaper to do it in Arizona than what we can
provide it for in Canada," RCMP Insp. Allan Lucier said Thursday in an
interview.

The training, which is led by Canadian police officials, involves a
two-week, in-classroom theoretical component followed by one week of
in-the-field teaching and certification.

In past years, the RCMP would fly in and house officers at a hotel in
a Canadian city for the two weeks of theoretical teaching, and then
head down to Phoenix for the field certification at the Maricopa
County Sheriff's Office.

But this year, the RCMP is hoping to save taxpayer cash by flying
police officers to one location in Phoenix for all three weeks of
training, therein avoiding separate flights to a Canadian city and
then on to Arizona as in past years, he said.

Lucier said the Arizona facility trains 85% of all drug-recognition
experts in North America, partly because there's a sufficient number
of criminals to examine, so it makes sense to send the officers to
Phoenix. Currently, there are fewer than 700 certified drugrecognition
police officers across this country, posing challenges for
law-enforcement officials to spot and ultimately arrest drug impaired
drivers.

- - Postmedia News