RCMP recruits earn their driving stripes at Depot
RCMP Cpl. Shawn Cameron manoeuvres his white 2013 Ford Taurus through 90- and 110-degree turns, dodging a sea of cones as the car goes up to speeds of 95 kilometres an hour. He’s demonstrating the Advanced Cumulative Track at the RCMP Academy, Depot Division, which is the national training centre for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Twelve years ago, Cpl. Cameron graduated from this sprawling campus in Regina, Saskatchewan, nicknamed “Depot,” like every Mountie in Canada. He went on to patrol Highway 2 between Calgary and Edmonton with the Integrated Freeway Unit before a promotion landed him as one of 24 instructors of the RCMP’s Advanced Emergency Vehicle Operators Course.
The Taurus’s brakes barely chirp as he rounds another chicane. He has shaved seconds off the maximum time that cadets must finish under. Basically, Cpl. Cameron is making the course look easy when it’s anything but.
“I loved being in the car when I was in the Integrated Freeway Unit, and I love teaching. I love this job,” says the Edmonton-born officer. “More than the red serge, the yellow jacket (of a highway traffic officer) has always symbolized the Mounties for me.”
The training isn’t routine driver’s ed. “We’re transitioning cadets from civilians to police drivers,” he says.
But first, years of bad habits must be unlearned, along with habits that aren’t necessarily wrong, but aren’t suitable for policing. For instance, instead of the “handover-hand” steering that many Canadians are taught to earn their driver’s licence, the RCMP favours “push-pull” steering, where the hands take 8 and 4 positions on the wheel and meet in the middle with each turn.
The Advanced Cumulative Track is designed to impart spatial awareness of a vehicle, how to negotiate curves at high speed, efficient braking techniques, and how to control a drive without braking.
Cpl. Cameron navigates the Taurus through dozens of cones, which on closer inspection, are grouped into invisible obstacles simulating real-world emergency situations that officers could face.
He practises a last-minute lane change and collision avoidance at highway speed. On a different, lowspeed section, he parallel parks on the driver’s side and backs up into a long, narrow “alleyway” (a double row of cones the width of a cube van). He completes his run in under two minutes, 15 seconds — driving half the course in reverse.
He says police driving emphasizes “task sequencing,” which includes driving while pushing one’s gaze forward to anticipate and react to hazards that may lie in wait, two or three blocks ahead.
The officers also leave the track and head out to the streets of Regina, to be scored on things such as looking for infractions. For example, vehicles with burnt-out headlights and tail lights, drivers who aren’t wearing seatbelts, or those driving while on their cellphone.
“Sometimes, we stop a driver who’s still on their phone, saying, ‘just give me a minute’,” he says. “Wow. You’re going to have to go a long way in explaining why it was necessary to continue that call.”
At Week 22 of the 26-week Cadet Training Program, trainees start more complex Emergency Vehicle Operations (EVO) scenarios, often involving “pursuits.” Here, they put into practice everything they’re learning at Depot: firearms, defensive tactics and other aspects of their Applied Police Sciences course.
A few car lengths ahead, a trio of squad cars continue in fake pursuit. Over the radio, a cadet reports a licence plate to another instructor, who answers: “782 Bravo Mike Papa, that’s registered to a 2014 Holiday Rambler RV! Looks like the vehicle was stolen out of Melville and took part in an armed robbery in Regina, do you copy? We’ll set up a spike belt.”
The Mountie approaches a final section where one of two green traffic lights randomly illuminates on a pole nicknamed the “Christmas Tree.” At 80 km/h, he hits the brakes, swerving around a set of cones, and coming to a firm stop precisely where the car should be positioned.
“The running joke is if (trainees) break the brake pedal off, we’ll bronze it and gift it to them for graduation; that’s how hard we want them to hit it,” he says. Cadets must also complete this obstacle course at 70 km/h without braking at all.
Prairie pheasants are flying high overhead, and a passing train whistles through the flatland of southcentral Saskatchewan beyond the track. It’s a moment when you realize this, right here, is the cadets’ dream: to learn such advanced skills — and to use them in service to their communities.
“The goal here at Depot is to get cadets to the point where they don’t have to think about those driving skills,” says Cameron. “They just become second nature.”