Special constable recruitment on target

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Alberta has hired 20 per cent of the 600 special constables hired nationwide since the program began in 1974.

There are about 52 Native constables and special constables in Alberta.

But recruitment for the regular constable program has not been as successful with Native people because constables are stationed out-of-province when training is completed. Meanwhile, special constables can stay in their province when their training is finished.

"The majority of them are at Native policing detachments and are stationed at different places other than their home reserves. The job is difficult enough to do without having to go back to your own reserve and enforce laws on your relatives," said Constable Arrol Crier, a Cree recruiter with the personnel directorate in Ottawa.

The RCMP identified long before current justice inquiries in Alberta and Manitoba that aboriginal people need to police their own people, Crier stated.

"(Native) people look at me different because I'm an RCMP ... or the non-Native community might look at me differently because I'm Native. They don't see the uniform, they only see the color of my skin."

Crier, originally from Hobbema, became a special constable in 1977 and a constable in 1985 to prove that aboriginal people could show they are as capable "as the next man" in attaining goals and objectives.

Natives have to increase their involvement in solving policing problems, Crier commented.

The current inquiries investigating strained relations between RCMP and the Blood band in southern Alberta as well as between RCMP and Manitoba bands should teach that, he said.

"If we are going to have any changes, I believe we as Native people have to get involved complaints we have, rather than complaining that the system doesn't work for us, why don't we get involved and make it work?" he questioned, adding that was one of the reason he joined the RCMP.

The police force currently has about 700 indigenous constables, according to staff sergeant Larry Dyck of Aboriginal Policing Directorate in Ottawa.

As well, there is a national maximum of 254 special constable positions, which Dyck says the department has almost fueled.

The number of Native recruits have increased since the RCMP relaxed its hiring policies in autumn 1987, according to Crier.

In the past, special constables had to serve for a minimum of three years and upgrade their education to Grade 12 on their own before being given the chance to be considered for promotion to constable, said Cpl. Peter Nash, the head of Alberta's RCMP recruiting office.

Now under the RCMP's preferred hiring policy, special constables can apply to become constables as soon as they graduate and get the necessary education and training from the RCMP.

The objective of the preferred hiring policy is to ensure the RCMP force is representative of the Canadian population, explained Nash.

The RCMP used the 1986 Statistics Canada census to get a breakdown of the Canadian workforce, then set a target date for each group to be fully represented in the RCMP, according to an official in the RCMP's multicultural advisory office in Ottawa.

By 1999, aboriginal peoples should comprise 3.2 per cent of the RCMP, visible minorities should make up 6.3 per cent by 2003, women should make up 20 per cent of the force by 2008 and francophones should make up 20.8 per cent by 1996.

A hiring campaign began in the summer of 1988 with a five-person recruiting team representing the target groups. Crier was amongst them.

"We no longer only processed applications from individuals who had a university degree, were female, bilingual or indigenous. (For) example, approximately 16 to 17 per cent of the general work force have university degrees. The RCMP only had 13.5 with degrees," Nash declared.

To make aboriginal people in Alberta more aware of the preferred hiring policy and encourage more Natives to join the RCMP, Crier began a recruiting campaign last year and met with two-thirds of th province's Native bands and organizations.