St. Albert city council will soon be debating whether to bring back an RCMP community advisory committee.
Coun. Bob Russell presented a notice of motion at the Feb. 22 meeting seeking to re-establish an RCMP policing committee, which will be debated at a future meeting.
He explained the intent of re-establishing the committee, which previous RCMP detachment commander Kevin Murray disbanded in early 2015, is not to get too involved with the process of policing, but to provide feedback about community concerns.
In a letter to council dated March 16, 2015, Murray explained he was disbanding the committee because it had simply become ineffective – rather than the committee providing feedback to him, the meetings ended up being more about him reporting on police activities to the committee.
“My assessment of that is the same as the inspector’s, It wasn’t working for a number of reasons,” Russell said. “You have to have good people on it; you have to have the right people, and you have to be well represented.”
He suggested the committee could be re-established, with a clear mandate, and it could be set up in a way that would minimize the time the detachment commander would have to devote to the meetings.
“We don’t start trying to run the police force; that’s not our job,” he said. “I will make that very clear: let’s not unduly burden the inspector with his time. He doesn’t have to come to every meeting.”
He indicated the policing committee could be established in accordance with the RCMP Policing Committee Handbook, published by the Alberta Solicitor General.
That document provides guidelines for establishing a formal policing committee, as opposed to the more informal RCMP community advisory committee established by a local RCMP detachment commander.
“We don’t have to do everything that’s set out there,” Russell said.
A similar motion previously came before council in the fall, and an administrative briefing on the subject was prepared for council. It indicates that establishing a formal policing committee would require one additional full-time staff member to co-ordinate and administer.
Alternately, the city could work with the RCMP to re-establish the community policing committee, with a key difference being that the committee is an expressed desire of council and it would only be able to be terminated if council chose to do so.
Russell said he withdrew that motion to give Insp. Ken Foster, who took over as detachment commander in the fall, time to get acquainted with his department and the community.
Foster could not be reached for comment by press time.
Mayor Nolan Crouse said he would be open to considering re-establishing an advisory committee in some form so long as it’s clearly established what the committee should be doing – he said the previous committee was fairly ineffective.
In the absence of a committee, the RCMP liaises directly with council on policing issues, which Russell said could be problematic because there is no clear chain of accountability with respect to how complaints are addressed.
Crouse said while the current system is working reasonably well, there could be opportunity for improvement with a new committee that has a specified role and is meeting that role.
“If it was restructured, re-thought out and reconstituted, I would be willing to look at it,” he said. “But I’d need to really understand what its mandate is.”
The motion does not appear on any upcoming agenda packages, but will likely be debated at a council meeting in the near future.
