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[Walpurgis]

Anyone who frequents off-topic should be relatively familiar with police corruption and brutality in the U.S., since there's a new thread at least once a week. So let's talk about police corruption (or brutality) in other countries. If you're American, you can find something really interesting like the Rampart division police scandal (lol) or something from another country.

I'll start with some background information. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are the federal police force of Canada (separate from the city police). During the 60s and 70s there was a separatist movement in Quebec called the FLQ that became a national crisis. The FLQ committed 160 terrorist attacks killing 8 people and injuring many more. They eventually kidnapped a British Trade Commissioner and killed a Quebec Labour Minister in the 1970 October Crisis so this explains why the RCMP hated them so much.

Now, here is some Benny Hill music for you to listen to before we begin.

List of controversies involving the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Theft of dynamite

In April 1971, a team of RCMP officers broke into the storage facilities of Richelieu Explosives, and stole an unspecified amount of dynamite. A year later, in April 1972, officers hid four cases of dynamite in Mont Saint-Grégoire, in an attempt to link the explosives with the FLQ. This was later admitted by Solicitor General Francis Fox on October 31, 1977.

Break-ins and bombing

A series of more than 400 illegal break-ins by the RCMP were revealed by Vancouver Sun reporter John Sawatsky in his front-page exposé headline "Trail of break-in leads to RCMP cover-up" on December 7, 1976. The story won the Vancouver Sun the Michener Award that year.

It wasn't until the following year that it was uncovered that the October 6, 1972, break-in at the Agence de Presse Libre du Québec office, had been the work of an RCMP investigation dubbed Operation Bricole, not right-wing militants as previously believed.[4] The small leftist Quebec group had reported more than a thousand significant files missing or damaged following the break-in.[5] One RCMP, one SQ and one SPVM officer pleaded guilty on June 16, 1977, but were given unconditional discharges.

A similar break-in occurred at the same time, at the office of the Mouvement pour la Défense des Prisonniers Politiques Québécois.

In 1974, RCMP Security Service Corporal Robert Samson was arrested at a hospital after a failed bombing - the bomb exploded while in his hands, causing him to lose some fingers and tearing his eardrums - at the house of Sam Steinberg, founder of Steinberg Foods in Montreal. While this bombing was not sanctioned by the RCMP, at trial he announced that he had done "much worse" on behalf of the RCMP, and admitted he had been involved in the APLQ break-in.

On April 19, 1978, the Director of the RCMP criminal operations branch, admitted that the RCMP had entered more than 400 premises without warrant since 1970.

Barn-burning scandal

Perhaps the best-remembered scandal, on the night of May 6, 1972, the RCMP Security Service burned down a barn owned by Paul Rose's [leader of the FLQ separatists] mother in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Rochelle, Quebec. They suspected that separatists were planning to meet with members of the Black Panthers from the United States. The arson came after they failed to convince a judge to allow them to wiretap the alleged meeting place. This was later admitted by Solicitor General Francis Fox on October 31, 1977.

Staff Sergeant Donald McCleery was involved in the operation, and today runs his own "investigation and surveillance" company.

As a result of the rampant corruption, intelligence duties were removed from the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was established in 1980.

 

[Walpurgis]

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