Nunavut RCMP give themselves a wake-up call

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

Nunavut RCMP decided they will call local officers outside Iqaluit more often in the middle of the night, after a police operator bungled a home invasion call from Rankin Inlet.

The Kivalliq community was outraged last month, after a police operator reportedly told a woman to wait until business hours for a local officer to deal with a man who had broken into her house.

April Eecherk, 21, woke up at 3 a.m. on May 2 to find a man standing over her bed. Eecherk said the man fled when she called for her grandmother, who was also sleeping in the house with Eecherk’s baby and an eight-year-old boy.

Eecherk said when she phoned police, the call was transferred to the late-night Iqaluit operator, who refused to wake up local officers, because the incident wasn’t deemed an emergency.

Police decline to comment on the incident, except to say they are investigating.

However, the top cop in Nunavut said the incident inspired RCMP to change their procedures in dealing with late-night calls from the communities.

Now, operators in Iqaluit will let officers in the communities decide if they need to respond right away. Before, operators wouldn’t wake an officer unless it was deemed an emergency.

Under new guidelines, Iqaluit police operators will call police in the communities late at night, if they receive calls about crimes that are still happening as the victim or witness is phoning.

Chief Supt. John Henderson, head of the RCMP in Nunavut, expressed reservations about the changes, as police in the communities will receive more early morning wake-up calls under the new system.

During a May 25 press conference on police communications, Henderson said he hopes the changes will balance the officer’s need for rest, and the community’s demand for quicker services.

“That’s quite a change in our procedures,” Henderson said. “I’m not overjoyed with that development because I still feel it’s important for our members to have unfettered time to themselves so that they are fresh.”

The change comes as part of a $500,000 upgrade to police communications in Nunavut. RCMP officials received funding from the federal government last year to overhaul their old dispatch system, which hadn’t been updated for 15 years.

Since October, police and Northwestel employees have been installing a new computerized communication system that officials promise will speed up police services, and keep the officers safer.

The system, called Windows Intertalk Console, allows operators in Iqaluit to stay in constant touch with officers in the communities, instead of struggling with delays caused by phone lines.

Cpl. Wills Thomas, head of community policing in Nunavut, said the system will give officers added protection, because they will now be able to talk directly to the operator while they’re responding to potentially dangerous calls.

Thomas, who used to work in Sanikiluaq, said the old, one-way radio system they used to have, forced officers to walk into situations without support.

“With a touch of their computer screen, [operators] can communicate with every detachment in the North,” Thomas said. “It has proven effective in the South and we feel that it is also going to provide us with the quality of response that the Nunavut residents require.”

Tagak Curley, the MLA for Rankin Inlet North, criticized the new system as being insufficient. He suggested police need to allow direct calls after-hours in the communities, instead of routing them to a centralized system in Iqaluit.

“This is not change at all,” Curley said in the legislative assembly on May 27. “It does not improve the telephone system to call the RCMP.”

Some policies will remain the same: operators will still be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Phone calls routed to Iqaluit will not be charged long-distance fees.