In an era where the tendency is to provide more weapons for officials, and where great concern has been expressed about the “militarization” of police forces, there’s been at least one move in the opposite direction.
In Canada’s small eastern maritime province of Prince Edward Island, the new agricultural environment enforcement officers will no longer wear uniforms or carry pistols.
The handful of Conservation officers on P.E.I. , some full-time and some seasonal, began carrying firearms in 1999, but it has long been contentious. They patrol PEI’s highways, seashores, farmlands, and wild places in an effort to preserve and protect PEI’s natural environment but the officers also often visit farms to check on compliance with environmental regulations under the P.E.I. Environmental Protection Act.
Many farmers complained it was overkill to have an agent unexpectedly show up in a black uniform, wearing a gun and bullet proof vest to talk about the location or condition of storage tanks on a farm, pesticide use, or about cattle and manure issues and so on.
In 2010, the provincial farmers group, the Federation of Agriculture, passed a motion calling for the officers to be disarmed.
Quoted by CBC at the time, Bertha Campbell, a member of the executive council said, “Farmers sometimes feel intimidated and threatened. Farmers are a peace-loving lot. A number of people feel it’s unnecessary to go to that level.”
At the time, the then director of enforcement John Clements responded that for several months of the year the officers are involved in checking hunters, and that one officer had a shotgun pointed at him and another officer had been threatened aggressively by an unarmed man. In that case police were called to a farm and the individual was arrested. Clement did say however that even in dangerous situations, no officer has ever used their gun.
However because of continued concerns, a pilot programme was begun in May of this year with one officer working unarmed and in plain clothes to deal with farmers. As a result of that experiment, a new sub-unit will be created to deal specifically with farm related issues with agents unarmed and in civilian clothes.
Robert Mitchell, Minister of Communities, Land and Environment, Robert Mitchell, said the unit will be set up within his department and staffed by one full-time officer and three seasonal officers.
Greg Donald , the general manager of the PEI potato board, welcomes the news, saying it will, “…continue to allow farming and improving and protecting the environment in a good way and you know carrying out farm businesses rather than you know one that might be confrontational and impeding progress on that front.”
With files from Angela Walker, CBC
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