OTTAWA - The number of aboriginal cops patrolling Canada's First Nations communities is plummeting, despite a recruiting drive over the last decade, a new survey suggests.
Just 55 per cent of officers serving native communities are aboriginal, a sharp drop from 77 per cent in a similar survey taken in 1996.
The "change (is) most marked in the RCMP, but (is) also substantial in the SAs (self-administered)'' police forces of many native communities, says a preliminary report.
The 2007 survey of 788 officers found progress in almost every other area: officers generally have more education and experience, are better trained, and include more women.
But the face of native policing is becoming more non-native, as employment strategies apparently fail to engage more aboriginals on reserves.
More than 1,200 police officers, many of them RCMP, currently serve about 400 First Nations communities across Canada. The number has grown steadily since 1991, when the federal government announced a policy to deliver special police services that respect aboriginal culture.
The Mounties also developed a recruiting strategy to help increase the numbers of aboriginal officers assigned to First Nations groups "to ensure that the RCMP's workforce is representative of the communities it serves.''
The Public Safety Department ordered the $126,000 survey from Alderson-Gill and Associates Consulting Ltd., which developed the detailed questionnaire with the help of native chiefs of police and the RCMP.
A final report is expected later this summer, but preliminary results were presented at an RCMP conference earlier this year. The Canadian Press obtained a PowerPoint version through the Access to Information Act.
Researchers are still investigating what factors might explain the decline in the number of aboriginal officers.
"Drops have been recorded for both RCMP and SAs officers who are aboriginal,'' said department spokesperson Jamie Tomlinson.
"We are still analyzing the data and will provide the results of our analysis when it is concluded.''
Dean Fontaine, an aboriginal officer who in 2005 quit the Mounties in frustration after 22 years, says the problem is partly the high attrition rate at the RCMP.
"The retention for their aboriginal officers, First Nations police, is not very good,'' he said in an interview.
"You rarely see a First Nations member stay past 25 years, whether it's because they had other opportunities or they just get fed up with how the RCMP upper management is running things. ... A lot of the First Nations officers get to a certain level and they just say `the heck with it'.''
Fontaine says he left the force after senior RCMP officers would not allow him to continue with gang prevention work in Winnipeg. He now advises the Assembly of First Nation in Ottawa on policing issues.
The RCMP currently has 1,358 officers who identify themselves as aboriginal, or almost eight per cent of all regular members.
The federal government pays 52 per cent of the cost of policing services for aboriginal communities, while the provinces and territories pay the remainder.
Ottawa spends about $105 million each year on aboriginal policing. There are currently about 168 First Nations policing agreements in effect, some of which apply to more than one community.
One of Canada's most successful self-administered aboriginal police forces is at the Six Nations reserve, southeast of Brantford, Ont., where all 28 officers are aboriginal and hail from the local community.
Attrition is very low, says Deputy Chief Rocki Smith, though the job can be tough at times.
"This is a close-knit community (and) you may at times find yourself responding to situations that your family's involved in or somebody you know personally,'' Smith said in an interview, citing the case of an officer dispatched to a car accident that happened to involve the man's wife.
"So it's always an issue. We try to avoid that as much as we can.''
