Tragedy hits home for local RCMP officers

April 28, 2020, 5:15 am
Kevin Weedmark

The tragedy in Nova Scotia on April 18 and 19, in which 22 people were killed including Constable Heidi Stevenson, has hit people hard and has affected people across the country.

RCMP officers in our area told the World-Spectator they particularly feel the impact of the tragedy.

Sgt Scott Fefchak
“It always hits home,” says Sgt Scott Fefchak of the Moosomin RCMP. “The past 20 years haven’t been good to the RCMP when it comes to situations like this. All you need to do is look at Canadian police officer deaths in Canada over the last 20 years. It’s predominantly RCMP.

“These things are happening in a rural areas and it makes everybody a little more on edge. The circumstances of this one are even worse because when you have a guy that’s mocking up a cop car and getting a uniform, it’s just weird. You want to do what you can do and instil the trust in people.

“That’s the part I worry about—how this is going to affect our relationship with our community here, on top of the tragedy that took place there, on top of just feeling horrible for the members trying to investigate this, knowing with that many crime scenes how long those days are, how tiring and exhausting emotionally and physically it’s going to be. There is no end in sight. There is so much to do to make sure they’ve got everything covered. I feel so horrible my heart goes out to them. Everybody that’s been a cop for awhile knows this is a big hill that they’ve got to climb.

“The sad thing is this has happened enough times I recognize the patterns. When it starts, people are freaking out, then there are the memorials, there’s the sadness, then people trying to figure out why, the information is always slow to come out. I know the pattern and I know what’s coming and it’s kind of depressing that I know how this all works.”

Fefchak says incidents like this are discussed within detachments, and always result in a mental review of the procedures taken when responding to calls.

“The RCMP is a little different from most police agencies because we all know somebody or had troopmates that are in Nova Scotia,” he said.

“Our training is geared to stuff like this but you can’t take every contingency into consideration when you respond to these calls. If all of a sudden you start showing up to every call with your gun out people are going to complain and rightly so, but at the same time you don’t want to become complacent. People want us to be able to do school talks and then 10 minutes later deal with an active shooter and that is a big jump to make, mentally and physically.”

He said an incident like that in Nova Scotia makes him worry about his detachment members.

“I think about it a lot,” he said. “As a frontline member going from call to call, you’re thinking about these things all the time and trying hard not to be complacent, but trying hard not to over-react and there is just that sweet spot between the two that it’s easier for some people to reach than others. Some people are going to under react and some people are going to over react. That’s why we are trained for this type of thing and we have consistent iblock training where you go back to the academy and get trained and keep your skills up. The training is there and it’s just a matter of being able to react, and ultimately some things are out of our control.”

Sgt Geoff Stringfellow
Sgt Geoff Stringfellow of the Esterhazy RCMP says incidents like that in Nova Scotia hit home for RCMP officers.

“It definitely hits home every time something like that happens,” he said. “Unfortunately we’ve seen things like this too many times. An event like this is a tragedy for all of Canada, including the RCMP. There are so many victims.

“If anything ever comes of it, it will be a new policy and new training just to help move things forward and keep us safe in the future.

“That’s the only thing I can really take from it. It is a tragedy all around. It definitely makes me reflect. Anybody that has their own family is aware of some of the dangers of the job. People think they know what those dangers are, but then reality sets in when things like this happen.”

Stringfellow said he is proud of the way the RCMP responded to the shooting spree.

“Obviously there is no playbook for and incident like this but you just have to be ready to respond. It makes you feel proud as a police officer that they were there doing their best. That makes me feel proud. I believe all the officers I know would do the same thing no matter what’s going on—they would respond and do their best. You just got to make sure you’re ready to go and respond to anything the best you can.”

Stringfellow said when incidents like this happen they are always discussed around the detachment.

“Everyone kind of hears a different piece of information or has a different view or angle of what took place,” he said. “It is always important to have that discussion to see how does if affect you or is it bothering you, that sort of thing on one hand, and then on the other hand what do you think is a lesson that could be learned from this. It’s also good just to talk about it and just to grieve a little bit. For some people with family situations it really hits home if you have kids that age, sometimes those experiences really bring it forward. We definitely have those discussions at the detachment.”

Stringfellow said there have been lots of messages of support from the community.

“It’s been very positive,” he said. “We’ve got lots of messages from community members and friends, as well as from the communities themselves. Some of the communities we police sent thanks to us on their behalf, saying thank you guys, we appreciate what you guys do.

“I feel we have really positive police support in our communities and we definitely appreciate it in times like this.

“It definitely makes me feel that if anything were to happen here, that the community would have your back if you ever needed them for anything and that’s a really important thing for the police—knowing that you have the support of the people around you.”

Staff Sgt Darren Simons
Staff Sgt Darren Simons of the Carlyle RCMP says the tragedy hit home for him in several ways.

“I’m a father and a son and I have moved across this country,” he said. “It impacts me because we weren’t successful in ending this before someone lost their life.

“Our goal is always to protect society and sometimes we can’t. It bothers me that so many people have tragically lost their lives and we also lost a member of the RCMP.

“That member put their life at risk where others were just innocently killed. It adds a little more annoyance that a member took a risk and lost her life in an effort to protect society.

“From what I know and what I’ve seen, they did an admirable job to try and make a difference. It does effect us a little differently that way, but we also grieve because we’re citizens of this country.”

Simons said the RCMP believe it is important to talk through events like this.

“We do a lot better job than we used to,” he said. “I talked to a retired member yesterday and he said a member was working and was killed in the line of duty a few years ago and they were back to work the next day and nothing happened—now we do a lot more to check on everybody’s wellbeing. We have a peer-to-peer program, we have a 1-800 number we can call for the government, more members take counselling and receive psychological assistance now to help us deal with things like this.

“If you look at somebody who has got my service—I’ve known other police officers who have died in the line of duty and one was a very close friend—it kind of opens up those wounds a little bit and causes you to reflect ‘here we go again.’ It seems more so now that these tragedies involve a lot more people now than they did in the past. It has a different impact that way.”

Simons said he thinks a lot about his detachment members when something like this happens.

“I was deployed to Mayerthorpe for two weeks after Mayerthorpe occurred,” he says. “I worked that and that was in 2005, and then in 2006 Marc Bourdages and Robin Cameron were killed in Spiritwood. Marc was a close friend of my wife and I, so I spent time with him in the hospital when he was still alive, and I was in the honour guard at his funeral—I had a hard time doing that, it’s an honour to do it, but it sure is a challenging thing to do.

“After some other shootings, I’ve gone to some of the funerals of members that were killed. It’s always in the back of your mind.

“I’m the detachment commander here and I take responsibility and concern for all my employees.

“I know it affects everyone differently because we’re all different. There are people who I work with here it affects differently.

“One member used to work in Nova Scotia right by there, one of the members that works there right now used to work with us, one of the members here has family in that area, so there’s that extra connection and it affects people a little bit differently. And I know it carries off into the home. I would definitely say that anytime something like this happens we tend to be a little bit less productive for a little while, we watch the news, we communicate with troop mates and friends to check on them and see how they’re doing, and go from there.”

Simons says he is humbled by the support from the community last week.

“I’m very humbled by the support we’ve received. Right now most businesses are closed because of the crisis we are dealing with, so to have a representative of the Legion call and ask permission to put a wreath with an extra single poppy on it at our flagpole meant a lot.

“I don’t know how long after that I looked and I’m going ‘hmm there’s something else there.’

“So, within a short period of time we had three different bouquets of flowers at our flagpole.

“The fire department is going to be coming by (last Friday afternoon) to provide a service for us to stop the truck, turn on the lights, and go down on a knee for us. That’s over and above. One business offered to bring us food today because today is the day we’re supposed to do all the memorials. We respectfully requested that they make a donation to the food bank in memory of Heidi Stevenson instead.

“We had a service today—Sergeant Cathy Walter of our traffic unit organized it—and every on-duty member had their uniform on, we had every vehicle with a member in it, and we had two members with their forage caps and one of our detached services assistants do a minute of silence at the flagpole, and I couldn’t tell how many people came to support us.

“There were vehicles all around, people were social distancing, there were people on both sides of our detachment, people in the parking lot, and we had a small service. You can’t ask for more support than that in a community our size and afterwards there was a lot more flowers at our flagpole. People after our service came and brought more flowers. That was just by word of mouth that people became aware of it.”

Simons said it is good to see the support from the community.

“The majority of the citizens we police want us there and show their support in one way or another,” he said.

“Cookies have been dropped off, we’ve got cake, people have brought other things by to just say ‘sorry.’

“It humbles me because we lost one of our colleagues, but 21 other people lost their lives as well. The only difference is, our member put themselves in the risky situation.”