The RCMP has had enough embarrassment already and the scandals don't seem to be stopping. After RCMP officers repeatedly tasered and killed Polish Immigrant Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver airport in October 2007, British Columbia RCMP officers have been charged with shooting and killing a man. Other incidents include charges of two separate assaults for two constables.

This time the RCMP's embarrassment may be even bigger. Fortunately, nobody died this time but RCMP officers were watching two female inmates having sex in a cell after the women had been imprisoned for public intoxication. Both women were put in the same cell and the RCMP did nothing to stop the sexual activity.

The RCMP issued a news release Tuesday detailing the allegation that, for seven minutes on August 18, four RCMP officers, two civilian cell guards and a civilian watch clerk - all of them men - watched the two women engage in what appeared to be consensual sex without intervening. You might say 'what perverts' theses officers are! They probably had a lot of fun watching the video while not realizing that they were being recorded. They also probably didn't realize that they were doing something wrong. These four officers and three civilian employees are now under investigation for doing so.

The problem here is not the sexual act itself but the fact that both women were arrested for intoxication and it is impossible or very hard to recognize whether the sexual act was really consensual as according to the law consent is impossible to give in a state of intoxication. RCMP spokesman Insp. Tim Shields also stressed Tuesday: "If one person was severely intoxicated, then it brings into question their ability to consent to that type of activity."

At the time of the arrest, police forces are responsible for the prisoners and they have to make sure that inmates do not come to any type of harm, which in this case of sexual activity could have happened. Besides that, there is no firm policy how to act and what to do when inmates start having sex. One would assume that if it was a violent attack that had occurred the officers would have rushed in to put a stop to it. In this case voyeurism and hormones took the place of common sense and good judgement. If one wants to be a voyeur they should make themselves comfortable at home, not the workplace, and turn on the internet.

Jana Paskova

Photo: ISIFA