Community into Intelligence: Resolving Information uptake in the RCMP

Police now and then undergo radical mission adaptation. Yet, how events shape organizational police history, including the adoption of radically different missions, has largely evaded scholarship. Through a review of executive-level interviews and strategic leadership documents, we trace how the Royal Canadian Mounted Police turned from a community-policing mission to one which now highlights intelligence. We argue that while various programs and strategies to garner rank-and-file and public buy-in to the community-policing mission largely failed, problem-oriented policing nevertheless readied the ground for the next mission iteration: intelligence-led policing. The core problem underpinning the transition was not community service, but information uptake.