“The Veteran Women’s Council is going to as well.
Thank goodness McLean’s is still shining the light on the lack of change.” – Jane
The role of RCMP spokesperson in B.C. is a big one. Mounties confident and clever enough to land the job become the effective voice of policing in a province where one third of the national force’s officers serve. So when two officers who held that position became embroiled in separate sexual harassment cases in recent years—one as a female complainant; one as a male accused—the symbolism was hard to ignore. These were, after all, people who personified the organization.
One was Insp. Tim Shields, the face of the force at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, who held the post for 10 years until 2011. Coal-eyed and square-jawed, Shields has been accused in separate civil suits of serial harassment against two female RCMP members, and the specific allegations are ugly. He is alleged, among other things, to have exposed his genitals to one woman while riding in a police cruiser; another woman claims he tried to undress her and, at one point, confined her in a washroom, where he forced her to touch him.
Yet Shields has held his place within the RCMP hierarchy as he deals with the suspicion hanging over him. His current position of district duty officer comes with a desk at the force’s posh new Green Timbers headquarters in Surrey, B.C., and sends him to major incidents across the Lower Mainland. Only after the second woman’s lawsuit landed did he go off on what the RCMP described as “administrative leave” and, even then, a laudatory biography of him remained on the force’s B.C. website. – READ MORE
