Pubdate: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU) Copyright: 2012 Canwest Publishing Inc. Contact: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/letters.html Website: http://www.montrealgazette.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274 RCMP ENDS LINK WITH MARICOPA SHERIFF'S OFFICE Mounties were to be sent for training with Arizona force accused of racial profiling The RCMP has scrapped plans to send hundreds of officers to Arizona for training in recognizing and testing drug-impaired drivers after learning the sheriff 's office they had partnered with has been accused of engaging in "unconstitutional policing." A scathing U.S. Department of Justice report recently concluded the Maricopa County Sheriff 's Office in Phoenix engages in racial profiling of Latinos, unlawfully stops and arrests Latinos and unlawfully retaliates against individuals who criticize the force. An RCMP official stressed Monday that at no time were Maricopa County sheriff 's officers going to be involved in teaching Canadians and that the only role of the sheriff 's office's was to provide access to people in custody who could be evaluated for drug-impairment. Still, the seriousness of the allegations against the sheriff 's office prompted the RCMP to cancel its training sessions in Arizona, Inspector Allan Lucier said. "It was almost immediate after having read the report that this would not be a facility that we would associate ourselves with," he said. "That just didn't meet our test." As Postmedia News reported in December, the Mounties had planned to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to run six work-shops - each three weeks long - in the Arizona city between April 2012 and March 2013 to train a few hundred RCMP, provincial and municipal police officers to detect and test drug-impaired drivers. Under a Canadian law, which came into effect in July 2008, an officer who suspects a driver may be impaired by drugs can demand that that driver perform a test of their co-ordination skills. If the driver fails that test, the officer can compel the driver to go to the police station for a lengthier evaluation by a drug-recognition expert. Several hundred Canadian officers have gone through the RCMP's training work-shops, which consist of two weeks of classroom instruction followed by one week of field certification, which requires officers to complete seven to 10 evaluations of drug-impaired individuals. The field-certification portion had been done in con-junction with the Maricopa County Sheriff 's Office since 2007. - --- MAP posted-by: Matt