BLOG: Breaking the RCMP’s code of silence

As a journalist for the last 14 years, I can’t even begin to count the hours I’ve spent trying to get information from police: information that they were dead set against giving.

Police are generally, let’s say “conservative” with information. And so they should be. They routinely deal with sensitive material that has an impact on peoples’ lives, so the default setting is to say as little as possible. Especially to annoyingly persistent journalists looking for a story.

READ MORE: Five Mounties sue RCMP in alleged medical privacy breach

So it’s an odd sensation to get calls on a daily basis from police officers who want to bend your ear for hours and tell you everything about what’s going on inside the thin blue line.

But that’s the situation with the RCMP these days.

The national police force is a hornet’s nest of bad news stories right now; there are hundreds of women alleging sexual harassment, stark admissions of racism from the commissioner, and tragic stories of post-traumatic stress disorder, to name just a few.

READ MORE: Female Mounties alleging discrimination seek class-action suit against RCMP

To be fair, the RCMP’s struggles with these issues aren’t unique among police services in Canada. But unlike other organizations, Mounties seem to have nowhere to turn to complain. They don’t have a union, and the grievance process doesn’t seem to work very well.

So Mounties are turning to the media to air the RCMP’s dirty laundry in public.

Trust me: they don’t like doing it. For the most part, these are loyal, well-meaning people who dreamed about being RCMP officers, and love the job. They just don’t like how they’re treated when something goes wrong.

When word got out among RCMP members that 16×9 was working on a story about medical privacy breaches, I started getting calls.

Within a couple weeks, I heard from more than a dozen Mounties who told me stories of workplace harassment and privacy breaches. And when they filed grievances, they told me the organization retaliated with character assassination; they were characterized as weak, having drug and alcohol addictions, being mentally ill or sexually promiscuous.

I didn’t only hear this from one or two people. It’s a common theme. I heard the same things during a PTSD investigation last year. I heard it from administrative workers, high-level cops, psychologists who treat them, and lawyers who represent them.

Their bottom line was, the RCMP culture is all about power and control. If you step out of line, you will be attacked.

There’s an old saying that the Mounties always gets their man. Stories like this make you wonder whether they’re going after the right people.

16×9’s “RCMP Confidential” airs Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016 at 7pm.