Bad Boys Bad Boys..What You Gonna Do?

Good day and thanks for stopping by again. If you read the first post, thank you for the support and if this is your first time here thank you for taking the time to read a little bit more of my journey. Last time I touched on the who and the why, and today I think I'll start a lit bit on the when and the how. It'll take more than one post to cover the 10 years of shit that I've gone through. Trying to explain the how is something that I am still working on processing myself but I think that by writing things out it may help with my healing.

Fair warning now, there's some heavy shit coming out in this one so read on at your own risk.

So where do I start? I guess I'll go back to talk about myself a little bit more about how I ended up in police work in the first place. I was never one of those kids that had the life long goal of being a police officer. Growing up I was always a quieter kid and I never felt like I truly fit in going through school. The easiest way to put it would to be that I kind of just coasted along. I didn't get invited to parties, I never really did anything that would cause me to stand out. I had my small group of friends and that was enough for me. I played some team sports, baseball for a bit and basketball. I didn't excel at either one and I ended up moving into the officiating side of both sports. I made enough money umpiring baseball through the spring and early summer that I didn't have to work during the school year. 

As high school started to wind down it was time to start thinking about the future. What did I want to do? I did really well in the sciences and figured that I would find something in that field that would peak my interest so after high school I went to the University of Alberta, into the general sciences first year program. Holy shit talk about culture shock. My high school grad class was 200 kids and the overwhelming majority was white kids from money backgrounds. My first lecture that I walked into had over 500 people in it. I learned really quickly that I wasn't cut out for that kind of learning environment. Since I was quiet and uncomfortable around new people I struggled since I didn't really get to know anyone. Plus taking a full time course load with labs on top of classes I just didn't have the energy to get through most days. Then there was the issue that nothing I was taking was piquing my interest enough to want to pursue it further. I went through class lists and major/minor requirements and the more I went through them the more I struggled to keep wanting to go to class because the more I could see that there was nothing for me going forward.

As fate would have it, one day when I was supposed to be going to another lecture session, I went into one of the main buildings to get some food and there was a small impromptu career fair set up with booths from Edmonton Police, Calgary Police, the RCMP, the Canadian Forces and a few other organizations. I remember seeing the recruiters there and being drawn to the booths. I spent a couple hours there talking with the various members, watching the over hyped recruiting videos and grabbing all the information pamphlets I could get my hands on. As I went home that day there was this little voice in my head telling me I needed to start looking more at the options of law enforcement. 

For a little background, my paternal grandpa was one of the founding members of the BC Ambulance service and he worked for many years as a paramedic. Both my parents are nurses. There is history of military service on both sides of my family so I would say that there is an engrained sense of service over self, to want to be a helper. 

So I started looking into the options. I realized that as a just 18 year old kid, who weighed in at all of 150 lbs at 6'3", I had a long way to go. I found a program at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, police studies, that was touted as a way to build a foundation of knowledge to assist with finding work in law enforcement. So I built up the courage to tell my parents I didn't want to stay at the U of A, which for them wasn't an issue if I wasn't happy, and applied to police studies. Unfortunately because I got a late start on my application, the program seats filled prior to my finishing the process. So I had to go to work. I spent the next year working as a labourer doing water line and sewer repairs then transitioned to being a sanitation engineer, which is a fancy term I used to tell people at the bar instead of saying I was a garbage man.

I reapplied to school early and was accepted to the Police Studies program for the 2008/2009 school year. I started school still a bean pole at 150lbs and I could always see the sideways glances from people when I said that I wanted to get into police work. Maybe it was the years of lacking self confidence or it was just in my head, but I took those looks as a challenge. That first year of school I started lifting weights seriously for the first time and started taking my nutrition into account. Who knew that drinking a bottle of JD every weekend and binging on Pizza 73 at 330 in the morning wasn't the best way to get bigger. By the end of first year I had gained close to 60 pounds. Granted it wasn't a good 60 pounds but for the first time when I said I wanted to get into police work people didn't give me that sideways glance. 

My second year at school I had the opportunity to do a field placement with the RCMP. Prior to that I was dead set that I was going to apply to Edmonton Police. I grew up in the area and felt content with staying there. That field placement changed everything. I was exposed to many different lines of police work, got the chance to meet and interact with members from more specialized units that I didn't even know existed and really saw that RCMP presented so many more options than staying in Edmonton could do.

I graduated with honors in 2010 and immediately completed an application to the RCMP. Low and behold, now being 20 years old with no real life experience, I got deferred for a year and told to come back once I had a chance to grow up a bit. So I moved out of my parents house, I did my best to cut back on my drinking and did whatever I could to keep my nose clean. As my deferral was coming to an end I met the woman who would later become my wife and she fully supported my RCMP dreams which made going back through the process that much easier.

As fate would have it, sitting in Tim Hortons eating a vanilla dip sprinkle donut on September 1, 2012 I got a call that would change my life forever. I had met the applicant requirements and the RCMP was offering me a chance to go to Regina to complete Depot and become a member. 

I arrived in Regina October 30, 2012 and started to meet the other members of Troop 2 2013/2014. We were a small troop, all 24 of us. The RCMP was in a lull of recruiting and getting members trained so someone somewhere decided the best course of action was to start running smaller troops, less frequently to at least keep the facilitators busy. We started to settle in to our trailer, working through the first week, trying to figure out troop jobs and get a feel for how things worked on base. Our stay in the trailers lasted all of 4 days then we were moved into the newest barrack building after the most recently graduated troop was moved out. The new digs weren't so bad, open aired pits, a kitchen area and a big common space with wifi. 

The harsh reality of police work hit home just a couple weeks into training. Adrian Oliver was killed on duty in Surrey BC, November 13, 2012. Our troop, along with the others on base, sat in the auditorium and watched the Regimental Funeral broadcast. The seemingly endless rows of Mounties clad in red, the coffin with the Canadian Flag, the memorial ribbons. The speeches, the tears, the shock. The funeral finished, we returned to our dorm and I called my fiancée, barely able to speak as the tears flowed. Was this really what I wanted to do? Was I, at 23 years old, able to process that I could die on the job?

Depot continued and I kept working hard. I did what I could to be a good troopmate, a good leader, an ear for people to vent to and a hopefully calming voice in the shit show. I had my routines, the important one being calling home every night before bed. I must have spent thousands of hours on the phone, sitting up right until curfew every night just talking to my lady. It helped me decompress and kept things in perspective. It really kept me sane through the 6 months of endless winter. 

Then came time to find out our postings. I had learned I was getting E Division, BC. The RCMP was still in the reluctant to send people back to their home province and I sure as shit didn't want to get stuck in Manitoba so BC it was. During the staffing meeting I made it pretty clear that I wasn't going to the lower mainland. Fuck that. It seemed well received so I started doing my list of places to go. I figured it would be northern BC, just based on where prior troops were having people sent. Between my fiancée and I we came up with a pretty substantial list of places to go. The day came and here's the post...Fort St John. The old adage is if its a fort, a port or has a body of water in the name, then you're in the shit. I was excited, it was a smaller city that had a good amount of amenities and wasn't the lower mainland.

Full of so much pride and ready to take on the world

I graduated April 29, 2013, had the couple day turn around to get back home to supervise the move and then it was on the road time. We did the drive in one day, expecting to drive into some little mountain paradise. Or at least see mountains. Turns out Fort St John is on a plateau that makes it a flat farming area chock full of oil and gas infrastructure. Basically the one place in BC that looks, feels and votes exactly like Alberta. I remember pulling into the Econolodge, the only place the RCMP daily limit would cover, ordering pizza and then both Kristen and I burst into tears, completely overwhelmed by the move. 

I started work a couple days later. The first day shift was paperwork, paperwork and more people than I could ever hope to remember. My second day shift I had my gun out, helping clear a townhouse at a domestic scream after which I was walking out the door and scared the shit out of the mail lady who happened to be coming up the stairs. Hell, I was just as scared as she was but I was the one with the gun so she ran and I tried not to shit my pants. Then came the first night shift. I was all kinds of amped up, it was a Friday night and I had no idea what to expect. First call of the night was a brawl at the homeless shelter. The whole watch showed up and we managed to get things calmed down a bit. One of the frequent fliers, Joe, must have sensed I was new, probably due to the deer in the headlights look I'm sure I had. Joe took advantage of the crown vic being old enough to have the rotary light bar on top and proceeded to smash his face on the top edge of the bar then while leaking out of his forehead turned to me and said "look what you did". What in the fuck did I get myself into? Welcome to the shit show pal. 

Fort St John at the time was a hot bed of oil and gas work which meant that it was flush with cash and with cash comes parties and drugs. So we ended up fighting basically every day of the week, the bars were full every night except Sunday since they weren't open. The drug trade was also a source of contention so there was the violence that came with groups trying to control the flow of coke into town. Within my first couple weeks there were drive bys, home invasions, robberies, assaults and then it culminated with a murder. I wasn't there for the murder, I was in Chilliwack for PRIME training, which really pissed me off. Typical piss and vinegar moment, being upset about not being there for a murder. One home invasion was mid-day, shot gun rounds getting dumped off inside the house. We found a target crawling a block away having jumped out a window and breaking his hips. Fear of death drove him to run with broken hips then he kept crawling trying to get away. Every traffic stop was done with multiple members, high risk everything due to the gun play. Then the district got involved and up came the Uniformed Gang Task Force from the lower mainland. Talk about a no shit crew of dudes. They came in an messed shit up for a few days, reminding the wanna be tough guys in Fort St John they weren't real gangsters. Things calmed down a bit after that, at least in the doper world.

It took all of 6 weeks for me to get punched in the face for the first time. Trying to arrest a guy for breaching his curfew and no-consume conditions we were wrestling then he socked me square in the side of the face. I was ready to go after that, then the member who was with me and let me get punched tazed the guy. Talk about an eye-opening experience. I learned then that Depot really hadn't done shit to prepare me and that I also couldn't always count on my co-workers to be right in the fight. That was probably the first step on my long winding journey into hell. It wasn't long after that my fiancée first used the term "work Chris". I had gone home to get changed after spending a few hours on the side of the highway getting completely drenched waiting for a tow truck to come pull a flipped trailer. She commented that I seemed more serious, not the same as I was when I was home off duty. I heard what she said and it made sense. I had been told for 6 months in Regina that if you project any sense of weakness then some shit head will exploit it and you won't be able to do your job properly. Seeing as I still lacked a lot of self confidence I felt like I had to really focus on not projecting weakness. Fake it til you make it. 

After two months with my trainer I was off on my own. Shortly there after I attended my first fatality. A motorcycle vs a coil tubing rig. The whole watch attended and as I drove past the scene to go block traffic, I saw the first of many things that I can never get out of my head. A rig medic had stopped and seemingly thought that CPR was the best course of action. With each chest compression the riders head flopped around and all I remember thinking was fuck, heads aren't supposed to do that. The rider had hit the truck after dumping his bike, hitting his torso on the back plate behind the wheel while his head continued to travel on. It was attached but not really. Fucked up but there was still work to do. So I took statements and kept the lookiloos away while waiting for highway services to arrive to keep the road closed. The it was just back to work, there were calls waiting to get dealt with. 

The rest of my field training just blurred along, no slowing down, just learning and doing what I could to keep from drowning. Days off were reserved for drinking with the watch and trying to recover enough to get back to work. Just before finishing my 6 months of training we bought our first house and a week after getting signed off of RFT I got married. We had a quick turn around honeymoon trip to Vegas then it was back to work since I didn't have much for time off. 

Just before Christmas I got to help with the culmination of a large scale drug operation. I helped recover over $40000 of stolen property, handled a legit kilo of coke and helped count over $100000 in cash. I felt like I was living through COPS. Every shift was a chance to see and do something new. 

It was also a chance to see and be a part of things that would forever change me. Sex assaults, child assaults, domestics. The detachment policed 3 reserve communities which presented their own social breakdowns. To look back now, they are the direct result of residential schools, colonial violence and the stripping of peoples cultures. That wasn't talked about 10 years ago. Hell, I was just another ignorant white guy trying to clean up hundreds of years of social break down. 

May long 2014 was another one of those calls that sticks with you forever. A high school grad party got out of hand and I got to work at 6 to start a day shift, seeing no cars in the parking lot told me it wasn't going to be a good day. I ended up out at the bottom of the Taylor Hill near Peace Island Park. Two drunk highschool kids had taken a quad for a joy ride and flipped down a hill. The driver was fine, the passenger hit a tree but didn't die. She had a broken neck and her friends decided the best thing to do was move her to a waiting truck. The dispatch recordings were used as part of the investigation and we could listen that day. A panicked voice with the sounds of ragged breathing in the background. Agonal breathing. The raspy sounds of death. A young life ruined in the blink of an eye. I was tasked with assisting the reconstructionist so I spent my morning helping with the technical work done to properly document the criminal collision. 

Then one June day I woke up between night shifts to a phone filled with texts, people saying sorry for the loss of co-workers, troopmates checking in on each other and I knew something terrible had happened. I instantly checked facebook since it was faster than the news most days and saw nothing but memorial ribbons and news links. I saw Moncton and my heart dropped. I had a troopmate there. She wasn't one of the victims thankfully. Dave, Doug and Fab were all killed solely because they were police officers. I remember sitting in the bathroom by myself and crying. I couldn't fathom the pain that their co-workers felt, I couldn't imagine the pain their families felt. From thousands of kilometers away I felt hopeless, knowing their murderer was still on the loose. I went to work that night, put on my mourning ribbon and did my best to do my job. I watched the funeral, I cried through it and again felt parts of my soul crack under the weight of that possibly happening to me. 

Early August, went in to do some overtime to help out with a missing female case from one of the reserves in our area. A quick couple hours turned into 15 as a search party had located possible remains at a burned out cabin way off in the bush. I headed out with another member and once we found the cabin we then confirmed the presence of bones laying on the charred remains of a mattress. Years later, the murderer was thankfully located and plead guilty, but at the time to see the level of depravity humans are possible of was hard to comprehend. 

I was just over a year into my service time and to look back now at everything that had happened over that year is it any wonder that I'm fucked up now? I had no hobbies outside of work, I had no community contacts outside of work. Days off was for either drinking with the watch or staying home and trying to recover from whatever the previous 4 shifts had brought upon me. Drinking with the watch always turned into telling war stories and bitching about the RCMP so not really all that healthy of an outlet. I was working out a lot, solely trying to get bigger and stronger so that I wouldn't be the member that let anyone on the watch down if we had a scrap happen. I didn't want to talk to my wife about work all that much since I didn't want to burden her with knowing about the fucked up shit I was going to or seeing or having to deal with. So I just kept it all in.

As 2014 started to wind down I found that I was right near the top of the detachment general duty members in files taken for the calendar year so I went nuts over the last couple weeks of the year, trying to take as many files as possible. Not the smartest goal but at that time in my career it was what I wanted to do. Then New Years Eve hit. According to the more senior members it was either a nothing night or a complete cluster fuck. The ball dropped, call 1 was some fireworks called in as gunshots. Call 2 was a little different. The tone alert, priority 1, turkey gobbler went off. Female running in the street screaming that he shot. We didn't know if it was at her or at himself, so off we go, balls out across the city. Evacuating neighbouring residences, holding containment, calling for specialized help. Turns out that we would get the dog handler from the neighbouring detachment and then our acting detachment commander showed up. Pretty sure he was shittered. Then the shittered corporal who lived down the street showed up. Fuck me what a gong show. Plans were made, entry was made. No more shots. Just a guy with his head exploded from a hunting rifle. Nothing else to see here, just a stack of calls holding so back to work everyone.

We got back to work the next week after days off and instead of a debriefing or a check in to see how we were doing we got in shit. We got yelled at for poor containment set up, we get yelled at for not treating it like a murder scene. I'm sorry, what the fuck? Seeing a guy vaporize the top of his head isn't really a normal thing to see. Such was the RCMP way. No follow ups, no check ins, just figure it out and go about your day. 

No more than a couple weeks later, it happens again. I wake up for a day shift and start seeing the mourning ribbons on facebook. Time to find out what happened again. A member shot at the Casino in St Albert. Hold the fuck up? St Albert? I grew up there. And again had a troopmate posted there. Texts go out, hoping that it isn't her who has been shot. It wasn't her, it was Dave Wynn. Dave died a few days later and this time I was going to the funeral. I got my kit polished up as best as I possibly could, drove down to stay with family then headed to the march. The palpable feeling of sorrow hung heavily over the crowd. We marched from my old Church to the Rec Center that I worked at prior to becoming a member. My wife and mother-in-law weren't able to get seats inside so I went to find them to go watch privately at home. Not before running into nearly every old co-worker that I knew in the building. I didn't know what I was supposed to say when they said they were sorry for our loss. I walked back to where we had parked our car and we drove back to my wifes family home to watch the broadcast of the funeral. I cried for nearly the entire event, feeling that same sense of deep seated pain.

As I neared the two year mark of my service time I was advised that because I was at that level of service I would be going on the field coaching course and was slated to get my first recruit later in the spring. I had two years of service and now I would be responsible not only for keeping myself safe, I was responsible for keeping another member safe and teaching them how to do a job that I was still winging it most of the time. Fuck it, what's another challenge to rise to. I just wanted to do my job to the best of my abilities and clearly I was doing okay. That or it was literally because there was no one else to do it and they needed bodies. Probably a bit of both. 

I'm sure that my hatred of being the passenger in a vehicle started around then. Responding to a robbery in progress I had to hold on to that oh shit handle for dear life as my recruit worked the sirens and headed down the busiest street in town. "Red means Stop" was a lesson we had to have after barreling into an intersection against the red and I don't know if my asshole could pucker any tighter than it did during that drive. Even to this day I don't do well as a passenger. Our last transfer was over 3000 km and I drove the entire thing.

As the summer drew to a close, life changed big time. I learned that my wife was pregnant and we were expecting our first baby. Excitement and anxiety were the name of the game for the next months as we started to prepare for life to get a whole lot busier.

Christmas Day is supposed to be a relaxing one. I worked the night shift so we had a nice easy day. The shift started about as expected, a domestic out by one of the reserves. Since my recruit and I were the early starts we headed out to go see what was going on. Turns out to be nothing much, the parties just needed some space. We made our arrangements and started heading back to town. Then things go to hell in a hand basket. "Fort St John for a suspicious circumstance, female caller saying that two dogs are eating her husband and she's locked herself in the bathroom" Ummm, what in the actual fuck? The first thought that goes through my head is how much crack did you smoke for Christmas dinner. See what I mean about a loss of humanity and compassion? I hear a couple members go to the call, arrive at the address and then about a minute later the channel opens and all I hear is "shots fired" then nothing. I have goosebumps writing this down and I can feel the stress reaction in my guts. Our dispatcher, who at the time was a wonderful woman named Amanda, hits the priority 1 alarm and tries to get more details from the members on scene. I tell my recruit to get her passenger dropped off quickly and that I was going back to town now. I hit the emergency equipment and drove the fucking wheels off that car. I saw a 2 on the front of the speedometer most of the way back, I honestly don't know how fast I was going most of the drive. I didn't hear the updates on the radio, I was so focused on getting to my watch mates that I was completely indifferent to anything else. I got to the house and ran in to one of the most fucked up scenes ever. I could taste the blood and gun powder in the area. I could smell blood, shit and cordite. There was blood everywhere. There was a dead dog in the middle of the living room. There were medical supplies strewn about and my watch mates looked like they had seen hell on earth. Then I learned the other dog involved had fled the house after getting shot, so now there's an injured vicious dog on the loose. My job is to find it and deal with it. So I did. That shift, our watch corporal was on holidays so we had a senior constable acting as supervisor. She called the higher ups, looking for some direction and guidance since it was members shooting dogs in close proximity to a person. She got some paperwork to do and that was that. Not a single fucking NCO came into the office that night, not a single NCO followed up with us on our days off. Once again, we got back to work and got grilled about our response, grilled about our reports. Did we do something wrong? And still not one offer of support. Not a fucking peep about our mental health, about anything. How the fuck do I enjoy Christmas now, knowing that the most fucked up call I have ever been to was on Christmas? How do I finish that shift and go home to my pregnant wife and try to be normal again? My wife is an animal lover so no fucking way am I telling her about what I had to do or how it happened. I can't talk with my watch mates about it because we're all fucked from it. Now I'm having that to deal with while trying to get ready for a new baby to be born. Trying to be as supportive as possible as my wife is going through the struggles of pregnancy while barely being able to sleep, barely being able to close my eyes without the fucking warzone being there.

We planned a little trip with my wife and her mom prior to the baby being born, just a quick rip down to Washington State to get some shopping done and enjoy the last month of being a couple. During our preparations we found out my passport was expired and I blew up and punched a wall in anger. I had never done anything like that before. Never gotten so upset about something so small and so trivial. I blamed it on the potential cost loss, flights, hotels etc when in reality it was just me not being able to process a small set back in my life. The knuckle dents stayed in that wall for a few years before we painted, a constant little reminder. It should have been a big red flag waving in my face that something wasn't right, that everything I had been through during the past years was really weighing on me, was changing me. But like everything else I pushed it away, pushed it down, refused to deal with it.

Looking back now I can't even remember how many fights I was in, how many close calls I had or how many times I pointed my gun at someone. Those first years of my career were a real blur and now to look back, to see how much trauma I went through, how many things I saw that had deep seated impact and created these fissures in my soul. Would I have talked to someone? I honestly don't know. Would knowing about the availability of help or having some kind of debriefing system in place have helped? Without a doubt. There were so many critical incidents that were in those first few years that still haunt me to this day. I have to take iron supplements because I have anemia. I also can't swallow properly because I deal with dysphagia, so my iron pills need to get cut up so I can take them without choking. Guess what iron tastes like...blood. Guess what happens when I taste blood? I have flashbacks.

I look back at old pictures from those years. I was different then, my smile seemed genuine, there was a real spark in my eyes, I had a full thick head of hair that wasn't spotted with grey. I felt like I was doing the right things and life was going well. I had a home, I had a wife that loved me, we had a healthy baby, a crazy dog and a crusty old lady of a cat. I could go out in public without shitting my pants. I could be in crowds without feeling panic. What happened to me? How did things get so bad over the next years? When does it end.

I know this one was a little long and really heavy material. If you made it through, thank you. If you skimmed over it to get to the bottom I understand. 

I'll end with another Latin Quote: Semper Ad Meliora - Always Toward Better Things.

Chris