Meeting the Challenge of Bullying in the RCMP

An interesting, and highly relevant, article has appeared in the most recent issue of Administration & Society:

McKay, Ruth B. (2014). Confronting workplace bullying: agency and structure in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Administration & Society, 46(5), 548-572. doi: 10.1177/0095399713509245

The author is a member of faculty at the Sprott School of Business, Carleton University in Ottawa, ON.

Ruth B. McKay

She begins with a general observation that an organization's ability to come to grips with the challenge of workplace bullying must begin with simple awareness. This, of course, is not always a simple matter as the hierarchical nature of most organizations, including police services, often serves as an impediment to real awareness of this problem. Change may not immediately flow from awareness alone since formal responses must be put in place to actually grapple with the climate that creates the conditions for bullying to take place within the organization. McKay's paper sets out to consider the impacts of agency (defined as individual influence) and structure (defined as organizational forces) in the context of workplace bullying. The author places her focus on the RCMP as an important case study in the area of bullying.

All organizations require both formal and informal means and mechanisms for resolving conflict, settling differences and advancing the goals and objectives established for their mission and mandate. Police organizations, in Canada and elsewhere, continue to be hierarchical, rank-ordered, rule-bound entities that retain militaristic elements, including command-and-control, use of deadly force, and high levels of internal discipline. Also, although this is not given consideration in McKay's treatment, there is a broad margin for individual police officer discretion that flows directly to the lowest ranks (i.e., constable) within these organizations. Therefore, bullying, as an authoritative approach to the settling of differences of opinion is something that often occurs within the context of modern policing. It is also something that international research has discerned in many other public organizations.

Bureaucracies place a high priority on hierarchy and give considerable power to managers and supervisors in order to advance whatever 'business' they are engaged in conducting. The core functions of Canadian policing typically include: crime prevention, emergency response, law enforcement, public order maintenance, and assistance to victims. Most, if not all, of these core functions require quick, decisive responses that are consistent with the laws, policies, procedures, guidelines and standards established in any given jurisdiction. However, police officers must be able to act with significant speed in circumstances that do not allow for long deliberation, speculation or contemplation. Accordingly, front-line officers exercise discretion in the widest range of operational areas and this 'gift' of discretion flows up the chain-of-command in all police organizations.

McKay, while not addressing the complicating aspects that necessarily attach to police discretion, does usefully discern three sets of factors that play a key role in the matter of workplace bullying, namely: individual; social, and organizational factors. Each of these factors may be viewed as contributing to, or offering protection from, the occurrence of bullying within police services. The author's interest in the RCMP has clearly been triggered by the prevalence and persistence of this matter over the last several years:

The seemingly systemic nature of bullying and harassment and the inability of RCMP management to easily and effectively address the problem can be linked to strong structural influences within a bureacracy. (p. 550)

McKay mentions several specfic instances of workplace bullying within the RCMP that symbolize the nature of this organizational challenge. In 2006 Constable Paul Carty raised concerns about bullying behaviour by one of his supervisors and found that his complaints were not being addressed with any degree of seriousness. Complicating matters was the fact that the bullying actually intensified following Carty's complaints and produced conditions in the workplace which became intolerable.

A former BC RCMP officer, Nancy Sulz was awarded damages in the amount of $950,000.00 for harassment by a superior officer. In 2011 the case of Corporal Catherine Galliford generated a considerable amount of public attention given this officer's extremely high profile as a spokesperson for the RCMP. In 2012, Galliford launched a lawsuit against Canada's Attorney General, the British Columbia's Justice Minister, three RCMP officers, a civilian RCMP doctor, and a Vancouver PD officer. Over the course of sixteen years, Galliford's lawsuit claimed that she was sexually assaulted, harassed and bullied.

 

In March 2012 another female RCMP officer began a suit against the RCMP. Janet Merlo, a 19-year veteran (again from the RCMP's "E" Division in British Columbia), argued that she was persistently harassed by her supervisor, S/Sgt. Donald Smith to the point where she developed clinical depression and was forced to resign from the organization.

Janet Merlo

Within the context of this gathering storm of concern about workplace bullying in the RCMP, the Commissioner for Public Complaints Against the RCMP commenced a review of 718 harassment complaints. The Commissioner's findings basically supported the view that internal bullying was indeed a problem for the RCMP.

McKay turns some attention to the leadership issues that pertain to the challenge of workplace bullying and harassment. Certainly, the leadership of former RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli may be viewed as a watershed moment in this organization's life. Zaccardelli, who was prompted to resign his position following revelations about his mismanagement, autocratic and insensitive behaviour, became a symbol for much that was wrong, or dysfunctional, within the RCMP. Following several waves of review, beginning with David Brown's independent examination of the pension fund scandal within the RCMP, a real window of opportunity opened up for reform and change within this police service. Along with my colleague, Christopher Murphy, I have traced some of the management and leadership challenges within the RCMP as part of the Task Force on Governance & Cultural Change in the RCMP in 2007. 

However, not all windows of opportunity are opened with the clarity of enlightenment. So, when Zaccardelli left a vacuum in the leadership of the RCMP, the Harper Government made the serious error of filling that gap with a most unfortunate choice for Commissioner. William Elliot had a long career as a civil servant in areas that operated in proximity to the law enforcement mandate of the RCMP. However, as a civilian, Elliot was never fully embraced by the senior officers in command positions. This was, and continued to be, an insurmountable challenge for the new commissioner. Policing remains a bit of a closed shop when it comes to inclusion of civilians in the upper echelons and Elliot's ability to manage his managers became an increasingly difficult matter for the entire organization. Also, it became apparent that Elliot's own personal leadership style was not a winning one. He appeared to have serious difficulties with anger management and rapidly became a liability for the organization. In 2011, Elliot was replaced by Bob Paulson, a successful and upwardly mobile officer who presented himself as a confident and no-nonsense leader.

Paulson quickly acknowledged that the RCMP did contain some 'bad apples' that he would like to deal with in order to move forward on the issue of bullying and harassment. However, beyond the compromised orchards that appeared to exist, particularly in British Columbia, it remained apparent that both structural and individual (i.e., 'agency') transformations would be required to deal with the bullying crisis in the RCMP.

McKay points out that policy changes that include anti-bullying provisions are useful but they may only offer the illusion that problems in the workplace are actually being addressed. This is a valuable observation that applies in several key areas of modern Canadian policing, including: excessive use of force, racial profiling, and police corruption. Fundamentally, the existing (and perhaps unavoidable) asymmetry of power within police organizations presents a challenge for police leaders and police employees alike.

The author suggests that unionization may be a possible avenue for positive change within the RCMP. This is an area that surfaces with considerable regularity when difficulties and disasters arise in this organization. I remain unconvinced that the movement to a conventional unionized environment would benefit the RCMP or the Canadian public. Research could assist in this area if it could be demonstrated that other Canadian police services which do have active police associations (i.e., unions) are significantly more effective at pinpointing, preventing, and punishing instances of bullying and harassment. Presently, there is not a strong body of literature in this area to offer that demonstration. Also, police unions do not by nature function to transform the prevailing police culture (or, more accurately, the variety of sub-cultures that thrive in police departments). Their overriding goal is to advance the well-being of their members from a financial and workplace health and safety perspective. It remains to be seen if workplace bullying is firmly lodged in the list of bargaining concerns being pursued by police union executives. Finally, another area that McKay does not take into account in her treatment of workplace bullying, is the often unbridgeable divide between uniform officers and civilian members within Canada's police organizations. The media has been focussed upon the many cases of bullying of RCMP officers. However, the public rarely gets a glimpse into instances where civilian members of the RCMP may have suffered bullying and/or harassment from supervisors, police managers, and commissionerd officers. Clearly, if sworn officers, such as Catherine Galliford with all of their status, training and legal authority are fearful about making official complaints it stands to reason that civilian employees who lack these resources would be profoundly relunctant to raise concerns about bullying and harassment.

McKay offers the following suggestions for improving the manner in which the RCMP deals with workplace bullying:

1. Identify causes of workplace bullying (including the personal, social and organizational elements). This may be advanced through the use of surveys which posed carefully constructed behavioural questions.
2. Change the RCMP culture to improve capacity for 'agency' (i.e., personal efficacy).
3. Include interpersonal behaviour, workplace bullying and harassment as key elements of organizational strategy.
4. Include employee behaviour as a component of performance evaluations.
5. Enhance employee-based supports that may assist those who experience bullying and/or harassment (over and above unionization).

I have always admired (and frequently invoked) the observation of Dorothy Guyot that changing police organizations is akin to 'bending granite' and it may be especially apt in the context of this examination of workplace bullying. Policing is a special case when it comes to the social exchange that happens between, and among, officers who are working in environments that are characterized by large amounts of boredom, routine and yet punctuated by crisis, danger and violence. The need to maintain discipline and personal safety within such widely disparate worlds is paramount. The importance of officer trust, cohesion, and camaraderie are significant and applauded by police executives and the public alike. Front-line police officers are especially prone to bullying and harassment because they work in isolation and often out-of-range of the eyes of senior managers and beyond the practical reach of standard operating procedures and departmental policies.

The study of police organizations certainly benefits when academics from a wide range of disciplines turn their attention to the challenges associated with these highly important public institutions. McKay brings a perspective derived from her background in organizational theory, business, environmental sustainability and strategy to bear on the particular issue of workplace bullying. This treatment draws upon the literature associated with an interdisciplinary approach and widens the scope of conventional police studies. However, what this particular topic calls for is something that has been generally lacking, or even absent, from recent Canadian academic research on policing; serious, sustained and substantial ethnographic examination of the real-world workings of police services, including the RCMP. What is called for is more embedded research by competent academics who can gain entry into the working world of police organizations in order to study a whole host of questions that will ultimately lead to better policing, more effective policy, and improved public service in the realm of public safety.