Retired RCMP officer recounts unhealthy workplace culture and racism in book
October 17, 2019
Driving to his Ottawa residence from Nova Scotia a few weeks ago, retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer Calvin Lawrence learnt that two Ontario police members had committed suicide within a few days late last month.
Retiring early because of clinical depression, the devastating news obviously grabbed his attention.
Lawrence isn’t surprised that despondent officers are taking their lives.
A total of nine provincial police officers killed themselves last year.
“In policing, if you seek mental health treatment, you are perceived as weak and you may lose out on promotions or transfers,” said the author of a new book, ‘Black Cop: My 36 Years in Police Work and My Career-Ending Experiences with Official Racism’. “I feel that every officer should meet with a psychologist annually. It should be mandatory and personal. As long as the organizations are paying for this, they get to see what issues members are facing and people are afraid of that.”
Calvin Lawrence’s new book is on sale in bookstores across the country
The RCMP’s indifference to the mental and emotional well-being of its members, said Lawrence, has led to the loss of lives.
“Whether it’s because of what RCMP officers see and experience on the job or how they have been indoctrinated and broken down or the culture of alcohol abuse or the easy access to guns, I don’t know,” he said. “What I do know is I have watched members suffer and I have watched the force, as an institution, fail its officers. And it costs lives. The culture is so dysfunctional that when an RCMP member requires sick leave due to stress or PTSD, it’s treated like a joke or a sign of weakness. They are referred to as being ‘off-duty mad’. You can imagine what taking on a stigma like that does to an already fragile mental state. You can also imagine how many officers suffer in silence, afraid of being categorized as ‘crazy’ or ‘mad’.”
Committing suicide during his tumultuous career that ended in 2006 with an RCMP settlement wasn’t an option that Lawrence considered.
“I was, however, at a point where I thought I didn’t care about what I did and the repercussions,” he said. “I certainly was in a position where I thought about harming the people that were causing me harm.”
Nova Scotia’s fifth Black cop in 1969 after East Preston’s Layton Johnson broke the colour barrier two years earlier, Lawrence left in 1977 with no promotions and every opportunity for advancement seemingly blocked.
Calvin Lawrence was Nova Scotia’s fifth Black cop
Joining the RCMP was an eye-opener for the veteran officer.
“What I found fascinating and troubling was the quasi-military approach the RCMP trainers took with the new recruits,” Lawrence noted. “We stayed in barracks, we were issued articles from a kit that had to be displayed, used and returned to their place exactly as found. We marched wherever we went. And if we weren’t marching, we were running…It became apparent, quite quickly, that the months at Depot were an indoctrination process, plain and simple.”
The extensive 26-week cadet training is done at Depot Division at the RCMP Training Academy in Regina.
“There, they break you down and build you back up and that’s something that affects people,” said Lawrence who was a defensive tactics and Applied Police Sciences instructor at the Depot Division for five years. “The RCMP teaches blind obedience to authority. The process is unhealthy and, in my opinion, leads to cases of suicide. I think it’s archaic and the younger generation will be resistant to the training offered there and the extreme control that’s exercised. I have seen it because I was there teaching. It’s abusive.”
He suggested there should be at least three training centres – one in the East, West and a Central area -- and cadets should be allowed to go home on weekends if they wish.
“To change the RCMP, you have to change the process of how cadets are indoctrinated,” said Lawrence, a former amateur boxing champion who was inducted into the Yarmouth Town & County Sports Heritage Association Hall of Fame in 2012. “You have to stop sending young minds out to be subjected to a process that you’d find applied in any typical cult situation. You have to stop hazing cadets and making them feel hapless. The entire system doesn’t need to be destroyed, but higher officers have to relinquish their command-and-control mentality. Accountability measures need to be implemented from the top down.”
After former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s wife, Mila, was struck with a picket sign during a protest in New Brunswick in 1988, the RCMP established the Prime Minister’s Protection Detail (PMPD) that’s responsible for ensuring the Prime Minister’s protection at home and abroad as well as the official residences.
The six years spent with the PMPD was the highlight of Lawrence’s law enforcement career. He served as bodyguard to two Prime Ministers and a Governor-General.
In 2006, he filed a human rights complaint, claiming he faced systemic and institutional racism on the job. His submission included examples of racist posters on message boards at detachments and around RCMP buildings.
Lawrence, who was awarded two Long Service Good Conduct medals, is the second retired Black RCMP officer to two write a book.
Nevisian-born Lynell Nolan, who was the fifth Black to join the national police service in 1973, authored ‘Being Black in Scarlet’ that provides an inside look at the agency and the struggles encountered by visible minorities who challenge perceived racial practices and policies.
“The comments I overheard from other members validated my belief that despite the polite façade presented by many Whites, Blacks weren’t welcomed in the RCMP,” said Nolan who co-founded the Association of Black Law Enforcers (ABLE). “The attitude of superiority is so ingrained that even very senior officers when speaking at multicultural conferences would use the word, ‘tolerate’, when endeavouring to show that they accepted Blacks on the force.”
Retired RCMP officer Calvin Lawrence
Tired of the harassment and discrimination they have been subjected to, several visible minority officers filed human rights complaints against their employer.
In 2003, Paul Carty filed a $3.5 million lawsuit, claiming he was the victim of constant discrimination while, two years and 12 months into his training, Jean Luc-Morin claimed his superiors told him to quit or he would be fired. His human rights complaint was deemed ‘unreasonable’ by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
Alain Babineau, who retired in 2016 after 27 years, said one of his bosses nicknamed him ‘Black Man’ and racial slurs were common.
Visible minorities have been facing racism in the RCMP for decades.
Fifty years ago as the only Black Mountie, New Brunswick-born Hartley Gosline stood out on the parade square.
During an early morning inspection, the Drill Corporal stopped in front of the new recruit and remarked, ‘Gosline, you stick out. You make our troop look bad and you better be White by 6 a.m. the next morning’.
That story inspired Sgt. Craig Smith to self-publish ‘You Had Better be White by Six A.M: The African-Canadian Experience in the RCMP’
