Mounties dangling high salaries looking for a few good teachers to join the force

I suppose it makes sense for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to be trolling for recruits among would-be schoolteachers.

After all, they'll have had some training already in how to deal with the thick-headed and unruly.

The Mounties were at the University of Manitoba education faculty's annual Ed Expo recently, the first time they've shown up at the school's job fair.

The force is offering spots at its Regina training academy, as well as openings for civilian members, Const. Ron Bumbry told the Winnipeg Free Press.

"There's lots of opportunities for people with a background in education," Bumbry said. "We are asking for diverse life experiences."

The Mounties career web page promises police recruits will have "a career nowhere near ordinary," while looking for civilian employees with specialized skills such as forensics, computer programming, human resources and project management.

Education grads make promising recruits. While the Mounties require only a high school diploma as its minimum requirement, it prizes those with post-secondary degrees, the Free Press observed.

And for novice teachers, the attraction is evident: money. The starting salary for a rookie RCMP constable is $49,000, about the same as for fresh-faced teachers. But a Mounties' pay jumps by $18,000 after just six months.

"A general constable makes $80,000 after three years," Bumbry told the Free Press.

It takes teachers 11 years to reach that level.

Bumbry said he worked with an officer who'd been a teacher for 14 years. Bumbry himself worked in the investment business before joining the RCMP.

"I wasn't getting enough excitement."

The RCMP, which has about 30,000 uniformed and civilian employees, has been battling an image problem and waning morale over a series of scandals in the last few years, from allegedly blown criminal investigations to questionable in-custody deaths and accusations of a culture that condoned sexual harassment of female members.

There's no indication of how its problems have affected recruitment, but new RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson has promised to to restore the reputation of Canada's iconic police force.