Nunavut RCMP set up tactical emergency team

August 26, 2009 CBC NEWS:

The RCMP in Nunavut are creating a tactical emergency containment team that will respond to dangerous situations beyond the scope of what local police officers can do alone.Fourteen Nunavut officers will be tasked with controlling emergency situations, such as armed standoffs and hostage-takings, in their initial hours until a high-level RCMP emergency response team can be flown in from Ottawa. The emergency containment team in Nunavut will be the first of its kind in Canada, said Supt. Steve McVarnock, the RCMP's commanding officer in the territory. "We're the first in the country that are going to get it," McVarnock said Tuesday."They'll learn a lot from this experience up here so they can fine tune it for other divisions, but other divisions are moving in the same direction."

The RCMP's high-level emergency response team has been sent to Nunavut before to assist with emergencies, but it can take up to 12 hours for the squad to be flown up from Ottawa.McVarnock said that's why the police force is setting up a Nunavut-based intermediate group, which can contain dangerous situations while the high-level team is on its way. The 14 officers selected for the containment team will begin a a 10-day course on Sept. 7, with experts coming up from Ottawa to train them. After the course is finished, the team will train two days a month, McVarnock said."Half of the team that are going to be trained are Iqaluit members, but the other half are going to be from outlying areas in some of our larger communities, like Cambridge Bay, Kugluktuk, Baker Lake," he said. "So if something breaks over there, we have a small group of people already trained that can at least get the logistics set up while we bring in the rest of the containment from Iqaluit on the police plane. So at least we have some expertise spread out throughout the division."

McVarnock said the Nunavut emergency containment team plans to work as much as possible with Nunavummiut and with Inuit RCMP members who are trained in immediate crisis negotiations.He added that he hopes to have a fully trained high-level emergency response team based in the territory someday.About 99 per cent of emergency police situations are resolved through negotiations, he said.