Mounties Under Fire is a gripping journey into the heart of the RCMP during a period of profound crisis. Notorious for closing ranks, the Mounties open up to documentary cameras, revealing a painfully flawed organization fighting for its life.
It’s been a most difficult decade for Canada’s national police force. Faith in the RCMP has been shaken – by Maher Arar’s betrayal, the pension scandal, harassment cases, and too many deaths on duty. And especially by the captured-on-video taser death of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver International Airport, and the Braidwood Inquiry into that death. A 2009 Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll found over 60 per cent of Canadians don’t buy the RCMP version of the events at Vancouver airport that lead to Mr. Dziekanski’s death. That number jumps to 71 per cent in BC, where it happened.
Woven into the big picture – and sometimes colliding with it – are the very human stories of young recruits still willing to step into a force under heavy fire. During some of the RCMP’s darkest days last winter, documentary filmmaker Helen Slinger and Bountiful Films were granted unprecedented access to Depot, the fabled RCMP training academy in Regina. There, Slinger followed a troop of idealistic new recruits during their six months of basic training.
The camera’s remarkable access doesn’t end at Depot. From top brass to beat cop, Bountiful Films captures a force in the throes of painful self-examination, struggling to get back to its core values
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