Dispersing the Fog: Inside the Secret World of Ottawa and the RCMP

I read this book and enjoyed it, would recommend this book to anyone curious about Canada's national police force.

Palango's previous two books about the RCMP were great insightful reads. It was obvious that he took time and effort in researching and writing them.

This book feels rushed and feels like something is missing. The book is filled with opinion, hearsay and a one sidedness that was absent in the authors previous endeavours. Instead the book gets caught up in the same media hysteria and sensationalism that has surrounded the RCMP for the last two years.

It offered nothing new that I didn't already know or could read from any other news service.
I expected much better from this author given his history. It is almost as though Palango is "calling this one in" and cashing in on the current media frenzy and slapping his name on substandard work.

This is evident in the citation of a large number of opinions in the book that come from openly biased individuals towards the RCMP or those with political or financial motivations. There is no opposing viewpoint. Those who disagree are labelled as blind, are influenced in some way shape or form by the RCMP or prevented from talking by a culture of silence.

To me, it seems like an easy out for not doing the proper legwork needed to write a well researched book.

I would suggest the two previous offerings by this author and take a pass on this one. It's just not up to par.

I've read both titles "The last guardians" and "Above the law" by Paul Palango. I loved both books because they were bang on and based on facts.

So I couldn't wait to read his next book. When Dispersing the Fog came out I immediately bought it and expected the same "professional" and objective analysis of the RCMP. I was sadly disappointed.

Palango attacks several subjects which is already confusing, but he also finds a way to turn each subject against the RCMP even though there is little facts supporting his theories. To his credit, Palango did a decent job with his investigation of the ARAR case but spent a third of the book trying to get the point across and ultimately blaming, you guessed it, the RCMP.

I have myself a decent understanding of the RCMP and I'll be the first to say that the organization is far from perfect. But "Dispersing the Fog" sounds more like Palango is ranting and trashing the force instead of doing what he did so well in his other books, which is: Reporting the facts! No the RCMP is not perfect, it has become a huge political machine that takes forever to get started and finally stalls due to mechanical failure at the highest level of it's hierarchy.

But Palango throughout his attacks on the force, seems to be blaming the whole organization and it's 26000 employees. By the time I was done the book, it seemed to me that the whole force was corrupted and incompetent and none of the police officers employed by the RCMP were competent to solve a crime. SHAME!

The force has employees like ANY OTHER ORGANIZATION. Of the 16000 police officer: 10% are working for their own careers. 10% are really bad supervisors that shouldn't even be janitors (usually in high ranking positions) and 15% are good workers but would rather stay as constables and slowly make their way to their pension without any waves or extra work. So their is still 65% hard working driven, intelligent individuals keeping Canada's communities safe working long dangerous hours, with low staff, low opportunity of promotions, absolutely no recognition from the public (cause someone's cousin got a ticket), no support from their supervisors and a bad criminal justice system. Meanwhile the media is making up big stories about the RCMP because it is currently what "sells" and give them high viewer ratings. The public loves to criticize police and the criminal element jumps on board.

It is my belief that given the tools and the staff it requires, plus a re-organization of the higher ranks of the RCMP and their management (half of the higher ranks could probably head for early retirement if their was a re-org) the RCMP would most likely perform to the highest of standards. All I have to say about Palango's book is that it is an attack against the RCMP and I would be curious to know why.

Palango's book is sometimes based on opinions by himself or people who dislikes the RCMP for a reason or another. Sometimes the opinion is actually of a police officer from another police force which is directly in competition with the RCMP for a local, provincial or federal contract. Eg: lower mainland or BC who's been trying to get rid of the RCMP for years.

Another issue I had with the book is that he even went has far as to criticize the officers for the tazer incident at the Vancouver airport. Placed in the same situation in REAL life, most of the citizens and even Palango himself could and probably would have done the same (if not worst) based on the information given and the training of the officers. The tazer is a great tool that saves life. For years there's always been a debate over deaths of suspects while they are intercepted by police. It used to the be the "choke hold", then the pepper spray, now the tazer. Will it ever end!? Officers make a split second decision, they are trained to use the tools/skills provided to them. They deal with violent criminals who they don't know before arriving at a violent situation. Fact is: If the suspect at the Vancouver airport had not lost control, thrown computers around, walked around holding a chair, the tazer incident would have never happened. Why was he so upset anyway!?!? Criminals put themselves in a violent encounter with police, not the other way around. Police officer would rather have a quiet shift and go home like the rest of the Canadians. Officer have a family and are not getting paid to get beat up or killed. That's the botttom line. I'm not saying that encounter was handled properly, it could have been better. All I'm saying is that nobody I know ever got tazed!?... And another thing: RCMP officers get tazed when taking training: ever heard of an officer dying from the tazer? And would they risk their own if there was a problem with the device?

Officers training could be better on any of their tools. Just like any other job, the better the training, the better the employees. Problems is: need money to pay for it and the man power. Will Harper help!?!

Paul Palango has created a book that finally addresses some longstanding, mysterious issues in Canada. Courageously and responsibly, in the first paragraph, he identifies the problem with Canada as being too strongly ifluenced by Quebec. Nowhere lately have I ever read these words without the author being branded an English redneck bigot.

Mr. Palango is nothing but, and frankly neither were many of the others either. He possesses the academic credentials, the legal acuity, and a journalist's search for the truth that validates the contents of the book, a hard-hitting account of the lies that Canada has been told for years by their leadership, both political and in policing.

The past 40 years of Canada's political decisions have been paved by prime ministers beholden to the good of Quebec at the expense of the entire country. Grand Mere, Arar, Khadr, Air Bus, electioneering fraud, the Power Corp. connection shed great light on how this land has been duped for years.

There is room for many books borne from this one. I would like to see an account of why English Canada was so lazy, misguidedly shamed, emasculated and ultimately complicit in the decline of its own country. The BQ/PQ bifurcation has convinced their own people, the rest of Canada, and the media, that they have been the victims of Ottawa's theft of tax dollars all the while accepting roughly $90 billion Cdn since 1967 via transfer payments above and beyond the tax money sent to Ottawa.

Mr. Palango also identifies Prime Minister Stephen Harper as one who saw these problems years before he was able to do something about reversing the steady decline. Hopefully the scandalous powers that still exist in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada, will allow him to continue the road to sanity, but the world of politics is a dirty one.

This book is a must read for any political science major. Nowhere does an expose like this occur within any one book. One would have to read many accounts to gather the amount of information collected in this book of well-researched journalistic treasure.

On the pragmatics of writing a book such as this, at times, specifically the Khadr/Arar connection, the book drags slightly, but it seems to also illustrate how difficult it must have been to investigate such a convaluted path of deception. That could not have been easy.

I look forward to reading whatever topic Paul Palango chooses to write about in the future.