RCMP SPENDING THOUSANDS ON U.S. TRAINING

Phoenix The Best Place To Learn About High Drivers, Force
Says

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 the 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 of six, three-week
training sessions. Each workshop will include approximately 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 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 class room 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, thereby 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 per cent 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 - even though the training will be done by
Canadian officials.

"It's just the volume and the consistency of drug-impaired
individuals that the facility provides us that make it worthwhile for
us," Lucier said.

"What going to Arizona is allowing us to do is to put some control on
those costs."

Lucier said the on-site bar is necessary so officers can drink
alcohol in a controlled environment to learn how to differentiate or
correlate between alcohol and drug impairment.

Currently, there are fewer than 700 certified drug-recognition police
officers across this country, posing challenges for lawenforcement
officials to spot and ultimately arrest drug-impaired drivers.