Clinton Jaws - RCMP Forbidden to Pursue vehicles.

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

Canadian cops cant engage in police pursuits Former police officer tells why it was so frustrating that police were forbidden to pursue vehicles. Thats right. RCMP members will get a code of conduct investigation if they partake in a police pursuit. https://www.clintonjaws.com/

I didn't like my members using the spike belt because we didn't practice it enough. We just didn't practice it enough. The guy's out, he has a lot of distance. He's off the highway, which is good. A lot of police officers don't do that. What does bad guy do? They hit the police officer. So, so spike belt.

Scary. Scary. A lot of the times when a cop will throw it onto the road. They'll leave it there. Bad guy goes over it, and so do all the other cop cars. This guy knew what he was doing. There was enough distance. The other police officers knew the spike belt was coming,

so they made some distance between bad guy. And when bad guy went over the spike belt, the cop did a good job. He pulled it right off the road right away and successful. Nailed three tires out of four. Went from 100 miles an hour to 30. They work. But God, man, when I was a cop, they scared me when I knew my members were going to deploy the spike belt.

Because we just didn't practice it. We did practice it every now and then. We'd be sitting around behind a mall, you know, having a cigarette and a coffee talking, and we'd bring the spike belt out and we'd all take turns throwing it. And we were terrible. Terrible at it. God awful at it. RCMP just didn't pursue enough.

We didn't hardly use the spike belt. I'll tell you why we didn't pursue. Pursuits. Can we talk about pursuits for a quick second? RCMP don't pursue. Did you guys know that? They don't pursue. When I was a cop, we didn't pursue vehicles.

The only reason we would pursue a vehicle is if we feared death and grievous bodily harm. In other words, we knew that bad guy was going somewhere to kill somebody. That's the only way we were allowed to pursue. Any other reason, basically, the pursuit wasn't justified. And if the pursuit isn't justified and bad guy crashes and hurts himself or hurt somebody else, that member is hung out to drive by the RCMP and they're going to get their asses suit off. Why? Aren't you wondering why RCMP don't pursue?

The commissioner explains it, actually. A short clip, about 10 seconds. She tells you why. This is why. Our fleet, for example, is not insured because our fleet is so big it would be too costly. So whenever we deal with any type of vehicle collision, it is through litigation. Yep, you heard it. That's why we don't pursue because none of the vehicles are insured.

I learned that years ago. I don't know how many years ago. 20 years ago, let's say 20 years ago, over 20 years ago at Deppel. when I took training to drive a police vehicle, which is one of the best courses in depot, but it's basically the only training you have as an RCMP member is at depot, learning how to drive a cop car. And I learned from my instructor right off the bat. They teach you not to pursue.

You don't pursue because there's no insurance on the vehicles. RCMP don't insure their vehicles. So if you have no insurance and a member pursues when they're not supposed to and somebody gets hurt, they're not suing the RCMP, they're suing the member. So that's why members don't pursue because the RCMP won't let you. There's no insurance. All the vehicles, no insurance. The states, I heard is a little bit different.

They have insurance on their vehicles. Do you know how hard it was being a boss and having to be? having to call off pursuits that members got engaged into. Asking me, I'm in a pursuit and then I would have to say, terminate that pursuit. That was difficult. Now, it was never every popular, but I was looking out for the members. Very hard for a member to be behind a vehicle going Code 3 lights and sirens and all of a sudden having to pull over and shutting off your lights and sirens. That's hard.

You want to pursue. That's why we became cops, a lot of us. We want to pursue. a lot of the times you'll be behind a vehicle you'll light them up and the vehicle won't stop technically you're in a pursuit so you'll wait a little bit this is what a lot of members did that you'd wait a little bit before you got on the horn with dispatch and said dispatch i'm in the vehicle in front of me is not stopping because the moment you did that then you've told everybody on radio land that you're in a pursuit and you can never say i wasn't in a pursuit the moment you

Tell dispatch, so a lot of times you wait a little bit before you got on the radio, because you knew once you got on the radio and you told dispatch that you're in the pursuit, the watch commander was going to shut it down. Kind of amazing, if you think about it. Bad guys can literally go by RC&P members do this and drive away as fast as they want. Not allowed to, and you'll be hung out to dry. through that settlement, which is actually cheaper, much cheaper than carrying insurance because we are in, police officers do high risk driving. So it's elevated rates, obviously, even though we're trained to do that high risk driving. No, we're not.

Train to do high risk driving. No. No, we're not. The only time we're trained to do any kind of driving is at Depot, RCP training. and that's just a little bit and you're just kind of going through an obstacle course going fast for a little bit

but there's no it's kind of silly if you think about it that you know the amount of times that we go code three to a call lights and siren the only training it's kind of training the only practice that we ever had

was in depot there's no pit maneuver in the RCMP that doesn't exist It doesn't exist. There's nothing like that. You would think that there'd be more focus on training when it comes to driving a police vehicle. Do you know how many members get in a car accident?

Happens all the time. Maybe they should be trained a little bit more on driving a vehicle. Maybe the RCMP should be focusing on that a little bit more. Just a little beef I wanted to share with you that I never really enjoyed. I honestly love it when I hear her talk. I just do. I love it. It just gives me so much material to work off of and to really set it straight.