Over the past thirty years, the public has increased their demands for police services which has contributed to RCMP detachments taking on additional responsibilities. At the same time, changes in policing technologies and Canadian case law have increased the number of steps and the amount of time it takes police to perform many of their routine activities. For many RCMP detachments, an increase in the number of members and other resources has not kept pace to the changes to the job of policing or the demands for police services. A common claim from police managers and general duty police officers is that by not adequately increasing resources, there are simply not enough members to do the job. As a result, general duty members claim that they have little to no discretionary time during their shift. In effect, there is a perception within detachments that general duty police officers are so busy responding to calls for service or dealing with paperwork that there is little time for proactive policing or other critical activities.
