Following a horrific crime spree in April 2020, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police put a temporary halt on selling its retired vehicles via public auction. Problem is, they never got the green light to resume sales – and now overflowing holding lots are leading to numerous machines being sent to the crusher.
As a brief bit of background for those unaware, it has been nearly five years since a resident of rural Nova Scotia disguised himself as an RCMP officer – complete with uniform, weapons, and a replica Taurus meticulously stickered up to look like the real thing – and roamed the province killing 22 people while also setting buildings alight before he was gunned down at a gas station. In the wake of the shootings, it was sensibly recommended the RCMP take another look at how it dispersed surplus equipment.
Part of the action taken was a mortarium on auctioning its vehicles, undertaken in late January 2021. Both an internal audit and external review were completed in about 18 months, with a recent briefing note dated April 2023 sent to the Minister of Public Safety stating additional enhancements to controls and oversights of the auction process were implemented at that time. Trouble is, the force was never again granted permission to disperse such equipment.
That leads to today, and a report from Global News describing storage areas in several major Canadian cities packed with former RCMP vehicles packed cheek-to-jowl. Everything from unmarked Econoline vans to Taurus and Explorer cruisers to ATVs and snowmobiles remain in limbo.
As a resident Nova Scotian, your author completely understands why cops initially halted the sale of retired equipment. The gunman travelled brazenly though the town in which I live after slaughtering over a dozen people and on his way to murder more. Examining how surplus gear is handled was necessary. But piling 48 months’ worth of everything with an engine in parking lots across the country to the point where some of them now need to be crushed wasn’t the answer. And for all its faults, it does seem the RCMP made numerous cases to the government for the resumption of dispersal but was never given the go-ahead.
Plenty of machines, such as boats and snowmobiles, should have been permitted back on the auction block by now. After being prodded by Global News, the government made reluctant noises about an intent to resume the sale of off-road vehicles and others “that are broadly commercially available to the public” sometime this winter. However, cars and trucks built for police purposes will continue being fed into the crusher, despite anyone with a pocketful of dollar bills being able to pick up a white (civilian) Taurus or Explorer through other sources.
That same briefing note linked above makes mention the auction process used to bring in over $10 million annually, while the present situation is costing big bucks in terms of storing (and now crushing) vehicles. It also points out how other industries used to rely on the sale of these rigs and that holding these vehicles exacerbates an already wonky used car market. Mention is also made of the environment. A list of what the RCMP asked to sell (and not sell) in the linked memo is shown above in a screenshot.
There are no easy answers here – but it would be helpful if some were given at all.
[Images: RCMP Facebook, Internet Archive screenshot]
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