Deer Island lost RCMP officer over officer safety, says retired Mountie

A former New Brunswick Mountie says the reason RCMP are no longer based on Deer Island is officer safety.

Gilles Blinn was reacting to alleged vigilantism on the island this week over a rash of thefts, and to complaints from residents about the loss of their on-site officer years ago.

Blinn retired as a staff sergeant in 2018, after serving 31 years, including eight as a labour representative.

He says he pointed out to RCMP at the time that he believed they could be criminally charged under the Canada Labour Code for putting the Deer Island Mountie's life at risk.

"One-member posts are not safe," said Blinn.

"It's all fine and dandy when everything's good, but when somebody wants to do harm to a member, that member doesn't have any backup that's readily available," he said.

Backup should be less than an hour away, said Blinn, "because when you're in a fight for your life, an hour, you're dead."

The lone Deer Island officer's situation was particularly troublesome, according to Blinn. The officer worked out of their home, without a police station or jail cells, and their closest backup was a ferry ride away in St. George, which "adds a layer of complexity that's unsafe," he said.

It takes about 20 minutes to drive from St. George to Letete to catch the ferry to Deer Island. The crossing takes about  20 minutes, according to the Department of Transportation's website. And the ferry from the mainland stops running between 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m.

"It's nice to have [a resident officer] for the community, but it's not safe for the member," said Blinn. "So that's why we [the labour representatives] didn't want a member there."

"It was my job to protect … the member that was there, and secondly to protect management from themselves because if something happened to that member, they could face a charge."

He noted a judge found the RCMP guilty under the Canada Labour Code in 2017 of failing to provide adequate use-of-force equipment and related user training to the Moncton Mounties who responded to the June 4, 2014 shootings.

RCMP Constables Fabrice Gevaudan, Doug Larche and Dave Ross were killed. Two more officers were shot but survived. The national force was ordered to pay a penalty of $550,000.

Blinn contends Deer Island wasn't safe for an officer alone years ago, and is even less so today because policing in general has become more dangerous, he said, citing increased drug use that makes people unpredictable and a growing "anti-police sentiment" across North America as examples.