Evan welcomes the Saskatchewan RCMP’s assistant commander, Rhonda Blackmore for her monthly check-in interview on the Evan Bray Show. Blackmore provides an update on the RCMP’s state of affairs in the province.

EVAN BRAY: A video caught my eye a couple of weeks ago. It looks like a good recruiting video from Saskatchewan. RCMP, you make an appearance at the end of the video. Boy, this video is taken off its, I would suggest, it’s going viral. You’ve got 1000s of views racked up on it.

RHONDA BLACKMORE: It was an idea that was born out of the I am Canadian video that most people are familiar with, with Joe Canadian in it that was sort of reborn here a few months ago, and we wanted to put a Saskatchewan spin on it, and I went to our comms team, and they came up with the brilliant creation that you viewed there.

We’re approaching 87,000 views right now across our three social media platforms of Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and it’s been very, very well received. In fact, my comms team reached out to the individual, who is Joe Canadian, and he mentioned how much he appreciated the Saskatchewan version and gave us two thumbs up on it.

Now that’s awesome. That’s good. Yeah, I think it’s a really, really well-done video. So if you get a chance, if you haven’t seen the video, the RCMP in the province did, you can check it out on their social media platforms. Well, before we jump into current crime stats and pressures, I actually want to talk about a couple of cases.

 

Financial fraud takes $5.3M from northern communities in 4 months: RCMP

You’ve had a few things going on, including a serious rash of frauds that have happened in the north, kind of been pulled together in an investigation. Can we talk a bit about that?

BLACKMORE: Absolutely, incredibly concerning. We’ve investigated 57 reports of significant fraud in our northern part of the province. Very concerning. Individuals have lost approximately $5.3 million due to these scams, and that’s what’s been reported. We know that often people don’t report it. They’re embarrassed by it happening to them, and don’t report it. So we expect that there’s much more out there, and it’s they’re very concerning, concerning for us.

Fifty-seven reports, $5.3 million, that is a ton of money. Is it like, is there something about the northern part of the province that they were actually being targeted?

BLACKMORE: Well, I believe it’s, some of our communities are more vulnerable. I would say people believe that, you know, maybe the North doesn’t have access to as many supports and such, and so they’re looking there. There has been some land settlement money that has arrived in some of those communities, and it is incredibly concerning when we see these individuals that are targeting people who could be more vulnerable.

I say that, but we’re all vulnerable. I get those scams on my phone, and I have to look twice or ask my spouse, ‘Do you think this is real?’ I’m asking those questions, so you always have to question it, because there’s so many uses of technology they can make people’s voices sound the same. They use both numbers. So it looks like the police are calling, or a relative is calling, all of these tricks that they use to convince people that it’s, it’s something real.

I encourage people to report those, but be incredibly cautious when you’re dealing with these individuals.

Call people back. Say, ‘you know what, I’ll call you right back’ and call them back at their number, or permit them before you send money, those types of things, because they play on people’s emotions. They say an individual, a relative, a son, daughter, granddaughter, is in trouble, and they need money quickly, and they just prey on those people. Unfortunately.

My experience has been, you tell me if this will be the same here. But number one, the likelihood of. Actually, being able to catch and charge someone is low. It’s very tough in some of these cases. And then even more remote is the likelihood of recouping the money that has been defrauded.

BLACKMORE: Exactly. Generally, the only chance we have of recouping the money is if a transfer hasn’t been sent or if something can be stopped at the bank, but it is very rare that this happens. Usually, the money is unfortunately gone and and they can clean people out of their entire life savings very quickly.

Blaine Lake RCMP seeking public’s help to locate escaped inmate

I have a question here from a listener. So this week, a prisoner was doing community service at Martins Lake and escaped, apparently. The name was Garrett Gardner, but the listener says we haven’t heard an update. Where are things out? Are you did you find them? Are you still looking? Is it a danger?

BLACKMORE: No, we haven’t located him to date yet. We are, of course, actively looking for that individual and hoping to locate him so that we can get him back into custody. But at this point, we haven’t, he’s, you know, he is a serving prisoner, and so you do need to use caution, but we haven’t believed that he’s at the point where we would need to put on an alert or some mechanism such as that.

Missing Sask. woman found, wanted man arrested: RCMP

It’s a fine balance, I’m guessing, because I know an alert went out recently looking for a male who had taken a female, potentially with a firearm. He was located.

BLACKMORE: He was last Friday that incident occurred, and as part of our investigation, we determined that the female who had been taken by this individual was in danger, and an alert went out. Our police dog service handler and his partner police dog Maddie were able to locate both the offender and the victim of this crime, as well, and luckily, she was physically unharmed.

RCMP Crime Statistics

That’s good. I always like to check in on what crime stats are like. What are some of the big pressures you’re feeling in the province? I know you do your reconciliation of crime stats at the end of every month. How are things looking as we head into the summer?

BLACKMORE: Well, it’s been very busy, but some of our more serious crimes, we have seen somewhat of a downward trend, which is great. Our homicide numbers are down, fairly significantly. We’ve seen about a 60 per cent decline year over year. Now that’s still the numbers are still well above a 10-year average, but that number is down, which is really nice. In property offences, we’ve also seen a decrease in those probably around that 20 per cent mark. So again, some good news, but certainly people still need to be vigilant and take any precautions they can when we look at break and enters or property security, proper lighting, fencing, all of those precautions are, well, a good investment.

Death in Regina police custody likely caused by attempted drug smuggling: SIRT

We, as often, will talk about the importance of trying to keep prisoners safe while they’re in custody. That was something that I know, at the Regina Police Service, we talked about. Recently. There was a finding through a SIRT in Saskatchewan that a prisoner who died in police custody in Regina a couple of years ago died as a result of drug poisoning. It was determined that he had actually had packages inside his body he was trying to smuggle into the Correctional Center.

How do you handle that sort of prisoner management has got a lot of risk, and you’ve got a lot of detention facilities in the province. How do you handle that? How do you guard against those types of things happening?

BLACKMORE: It is a significant risk for us, most definitely. When we take a prisoner into custody, we are responsible for their well being. We need to make sure that they’re treated with all the rights that they’re afforded by law, and that those rights aren’t violated.

It’s certainly becoming, I would say, even more challenging, as we have seen that increase in drug use over the last number of years, because individuals are ingesting substances, it is making them do things that are not normal, and people are calling the police as a result of that behavior, and we are apprehending them, and then they are, in some cases, suffering fatal effects from the drugs they have ingested.

It is certainly concerning, but we do take a lot of steps to make sure that our prisoners are safe. We are just starting a pilot for the RCMP. We’re the first division in the country to pilot the biometric monitoring of prisoners in cells. Regina Police Service and, recently, P.A. Police Service have both started using that technology to help monitor prisoners.

In addition to all of the other pieces, checks that our guards do, walking to the doors, making sure that prisoners are still healthy and able to respond to them. When they do these responsiveness checks. They make sure that if someone does not appear responsive, they have to call in members so that they can look to see if our members have any concerns, and they call EMS right away. So there’s lots of protocol, lots of policy on this, and we do our very best to keep everyone of them safe.

The question comes in from two audience members, Don’t you do strip searches?

And would that not help in determining this without getting too graphic and into the discussion? I mean, is there strip searches I know don’t happen very often. Can you talk about that from an RCMP standpoint, and is there technology that could help us understand if someone has packages inside of them that they’re trying to smuggle to a correctional facility?

BLACKMORE: Yeah, you’re correct. Strip searches don’t happen very often, and that is intentional. That is because they are considered a higher violation of an individual’s rights, and we have to believe that there’s a reason we just can’t randomly strip search individuals or strip search every prisoner.

So that has to be based on some reason to believe that that strip search is warranted. We have to justify and document that our searches, you know, we train our police officers significantly in how to search individuals properly. We have a policy to use wands to look for potential knives, guns, anything that might show up with a wand search of their body in addition to a physical search. So we do our best, but there are certainly some restrictions as far as how much we can search an individual.

I feel like the day is coming, and it may not be in your career, or this generation, where scanners will be available, much like an X-ray, to help understand if there’s something that’s a threat to the person or someone else.

BLACKMORE: Well, potentially, that could very much be what we use. You look at the scanners that they use at the airport, right? And you know they have an advantage, because you don’t get scanned. You don’t get on the plane full stop, very easy to address that for us, it becomes a little bit different when you are forcing someone to do that. So I can, I agree with you. I can certainly see a day coming when it evolves to the point where, for everyone’s safety that some type of scanning is used.

Moe says letter to prime minister an ‘opportunity’ not an ultimatum

Premier Moe recently wrote a letter to the Prime Minister asking that they introduce bail reform and stronger penalties to deal with new street drugs. What are your thoughts if you took your red pen out and you are crafting some improvements to bail reform? What would it look like, and how would it help?

BLACKMORE: We need to make some changes that hold some of these offenders. It is very difficult for us to deal with these repeat offenders.

When you look at our homicide stats from January 2019 to April 30 of this year,

• We had 228 individuals accused of homicide
• 39% of those were on conditions when they committed the homicide, and
• 14% of those were wanted

In 2025, of the homicides we have, 55% of those were on conditions.

So they’re releasing people, they’re reoffending and wreaking havoc, and in some cases, committing homicides, violent, violent crimes and homicides in our communities.

Just give you a real quick example. We have one individual over 30 Criminal Code convictions on his record, 17 of those are breaches, and between September 2024, and the present, he’s reoffended, been remanded and released twice in January of this year, probations prepared a report that said he’s likely to reoffend, and he received bail five days later.

It’s got to be frustrating for your members?

BLACKMORE: It’s incredibly frustrating. We talked a lot about the cost of policing. We’re spending 10’s of 1000’s of dollars on getting these offenders into custody and they’re being released within days, and we’re back out there, they’re breaching, and we’re back out spending money to chase them around again and try to get them back into custody.

It’s longer sentences or is it stricter conditions, or a combination of a variety of those?

BLACKMORE: We need to look at both of those. We also need to look at what type of rehabilitation is happening within correctional systems, because they are coming out and they’re going right back to what they know best. Then, unfortunately, that is criminal activity, right?

Mounties looking for white Malibu after police vehicle struck during traffic stop

I read that you’ve had a couple of police cars hit by impaired drivers recently.

BLACKMORE: Yes, as crazy as it sounds, this week alone, we’ve had two of our marked police vehicles hit. One was in Tisdale, a member pulled a vehicle over, and that vehicle backed up into our police car, and the other one was in Swift Current, a member was about to get out of his police vehicle at a task he was conducting. Their curfew check, and an impaired driver who ended up blowing over three times the legal limit, smashed into our police car, and obviously, the driver was significantly impaired.

Impaired driving is still obviously a priority and a problem?

BLACKMORE: Last week was Canada Road Safety Week, and our members checked over 6600 vehicles during that week. 41 drivers were charged with criminal code alcohol-related impaired driving offences. It’s significant.

• 33 individuals have lost their lives on Saskatchewan roads in RCMP jurisdiction this year,

Much of that relates to impaired driving. Last year, 44 per cent of our fatal collisions in the RCMP area in Saskatchewan were drug or alcohol order factors.

Those are sobering stats, and I say that intentionally.