RCMP scraps plans to train officers in Arizona

Scathing report on sheriff’s office behind decision

The RCMP has scrapped plans to send hundreds of officers to Arizona for training in recognizing and testing drug-impaired drivers after learning that the sheriff’s office they had partnered with has been accused of engaging in “unconstitutional policing.”

A scathing U.S. Department of Justice report recently concluded that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Phoenix engages in racial profiling of Latinos, unlawfully stops and arrests Latinos and unlawfully retaliates against individuals who criticize the force.

An RCMP official stressed Monday that at no time were Maricopa County sheriff’s officers going to be involved in teaching the Canadians and that the only role of the sheriff’s office’s was to provide access to people in custody at a remand centre who could be evaluated for drug impairment.

Still, the seriousness of the allegations against the sheriff’s office prompted the RCMP to cancel its training sessions in Arizona, said Insp. Allan Lucier.

“It was almost immediate after having read the report that this would not be a facility that we would associate ourselves with,” he said. “That just didn’t meet our test.”

As Postmedia News reported in December, the Mounties had planned to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to run six workshops — each three weeks long — in the Arizona city between April 2012 and March 2013 to train a few hundred RCMP, provincial and municipal police officers to detect and test drug-impaired drivers.

Under a Canadian law, which came into effect in July 2008, an officer who suspects a driver may be impaired by drugs can demand that the driver perform a test of their co-ordination skills. If the driver fails that test, the officer can compel the driver to go to the police station for a lengthier evaluation by a drug-recognition expert. Several hundred Canadian police officers have gone through the RCMP’S train- ing workshops, which consist of two weeks of classroom instruction followed by one week of field certification, which requires officers to complete seven to 10 evaluations of drugimpaired individuals.

The field-certification portion had been done in conjunction with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office since 2007. Phoenix was considered a desirable location, in part because of the relatively large and consistent number of drug-impaired individuals who are apprehended in the area, Lucier said.

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office — whose commander, Joe Arpaio, likes to call himself “America’s toughest sheriff” and has received a lot of attention for his tough approach to illegal immigration — did not respond to repeated calls and emails Monday.

David Eby, executive director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, which notified the RCMP about the allegations against the sheriff’s office last Wednesday, said the RCMP made the right call to abandon its training in Arizona.

He urged the Mounties to find a “made-inCanada” solution and said Canadian police agencies should think twice about sending officers south of the border for any type of training. “The U.S. has a different policing context. … There’s a different legal environment, different constitutional norms,” he said.

In a Dec. 15 letter to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division said its investigation of the force uncovered a “chronic culture of disregard for basic legal and constitutional obligations.” Among the allegations:

Latino drivers are four to nine times more likely to be pulled over than non-latino drivers in that county;

detention officers punish Latino inmates who don’t follow commands given in English and make them sign forms in English without translation assistance.

Lucier said Monday the RCMP hasn’t decided yet where it will now conduct the workshops.