Sgt. Chris Backus, the Sunshine Coast RCMP officer who helped organize a nation-wide movement that had members removing or covering their signature yellow stripes to draw attention to pay and working conditions, is leaving the force.
Backus told Coast Reporter this week that he’s taking a medical discharge after having surgery for a long-standing back injury.
The stripe protest started at the Sunshine Coast and North Vancouver detachments in April and helped boost efforts to form a union for RCMP members.
Backus said his retirement from active duty policing doesn’t mean he’s giving up that fight for better working conditions at the RCMP. In fact, he said it’s going to allow him to put even more energy into those efforts.
“Nobody wants the force to succeed more than I do. I deeply care about the hard-working frontline members, but I also care about the communities they police – and if you don’t have a healthy police force then the communities are not getting optimal policing service. Those things go hand-in-hand,” he said.
Backus said he’s working with partners to set up a Backus Foundation to continue the public awareness campaign. “We need the public to understand what we’re actually dealing with in the organization. I don’t need to be part of the organization any more to be that kind of a change agent,” he said.
Backus also wants to teach police ethics and leadership to the next generation of law enforcement professionals. “I see the organization right now as an old hockey team that is on a losing streak. You bring in a new coach, you bring in new theories, but nobody wants to learn anything new, and we just continue to lose,” Backus said.
“Rather than go out and struggle with these people who are addicted to ego and power and won’t change, let’s create a minor league team where we can give these people the values and the perspectives earlier on in their careers that they can bring forward and, hopefully in time, they can bring about organizational change.”
Backus said he was particularly disappointed in RCMP leadership’s reaction to a ruling that the force violated the Labour Code by failing to provide adequate equipment and training to the RCMP members in Moncton who were killed or wounded in a June 2014 shooting.
“Not a single senior manager of the RCMP showed up, went to the three widowed wives that were in the courtroom that day and said – at the very least – ‘I’m sorry and we need to do this differently and better.’ They didn’t even show. They did nothing. It’s this type of behaviour, it’s this type of values, that make me believe nothing will change.”
Backus spoke to the crowd at this year’s Labour Day picnic in Gibsons about the union drive through the National Police Federation. He still supports the idea, but said it will take years to complete certification and form an effective organization.
Backus’s decision to leave the RCMP also means he’ll be leaving the Sunshine Coast for the Lower Mainland.
“The Sunshine Coast has been an incredible place to live for the last two-and-a-half years. I’ve loved this community and the people in it and it’s been a pleasure to police this community,” Backus said. “I always felt that this was a community that wanted genuinely to have a warm and open relationship with the police that were here, and I very much appreciated my days here.”
Our full interview with Chris Backus will run in episode 79 of the Coast Beat podcast, found at www.coastreporter.net.
