Dry town eyes community constables to battle booze

Joanni Sallerina, Gjoa Haven’s mayor, stands outside the hamlet office building Aug. 31. Sallerina says the RCMP’s pledge to bring in community constables for its two-person detachments will help combat bootlegging in the dry community and allow police to work more closely with elders. (PHOTO BY CHRIS WINDEYER)

GJOA HAVEN—Even though his hamlet is technically a dry community, mayor Joanni Sallerina says Gjoa Haven’s number one problem is booze.

“It’s so bad when you go golfing out there, there’s empty mickeys all over the golf course,” Sallerina said during an interview in his office Aug. 31. “It’s really sad to see.”

So Sallerina is happy with the promise that Nunavut’s RCMP plan to start reintroducing community constables in hamlets with smaller detachments.

Supt. Steve McVarnock, the commanding officer of RCMP V Division, said the force has a list of 13 potential recruits from across the territory. His office hopes to get five of them into a course at the RCMP training depot in Regina this November.

The force will choose the shortlist of five based on merit, McVarnock said in an interview Tuesday, but candidates from hamlets with smaller detachments will get extra consideration.

“Eventually we want [community constables] in every community in Nunavut and obviously we have to make some tough decisions on the first five in terms of which ones we choose and which communities they’re from,” McVarnock said.

Sallerina, who was recently elected as the Kitikmeot’s regional representative on the NAM board, said he estimates 90 per cent of Gjoa Haven’s assaults involve alcohol. He suspects the booze is most often smuggled in on medical flights.

The workload those assaults generate is so heavy, he said, that Mounties spend their days just catching up on the paperwork from the night before. That leaves them unable to do outreach work, like delivering drug and alcohol awareness training at the local school.

McVarnock agreed, adding a community constable will allow RCMP officers more flexibility in scheduling shifts. Burnout is a common problem among members in smaller detachments.

And having a special constable fluent in both English and Inukitut will allow the police to enlist the help of the community’s elders, who in the past might have found Mounties intimidating, Sallerina said.

“Having a special constable who can speak both languages is important,” he said. “When you don’t understand a situation, you get defensive.”

The ability to speak Inuktitut will be “critical” for applicants to the community constable training program, McVarnock said. “We want them to be the conduit between the police and the community,” he said.

McVarnock also said the RCMP is working with Government of Nunavut to get more Inuktitut-speaking civilian clerical workers into detachments outside Iqaluit. “There would be somebody working at the counter who can do the day-to-day things for the community” like helping people fill out forms and give statements, he said.