Culture : Canadian Mounties May Get Their Man--But Promoters Don’t Always Get It : Wrong uniforms and wrong image are being exploited, the police complain.

With a nod to the London bobby, Canada may be the only nation where a police officer is the national icon.

The image of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer is nearly ubiquitous here. It can be seen and purchased on T-shirts, coffee mugs, calendars, postcards and shot glasses. There are Mountie dolls and Mountie stuffed bears and Mountie key chains. Next fall, the first Canadian-produced television series to appear on an American network during prime time will debut. It’s main character is a Mountie who works somewhat out of his element in Chicago, but who always gets his man.

Now, for the first time in its 121-year history, the RCMP is moving to aggressively protect its image from what it regards as improper exploitation, and perhaps cash in itself as well.

“We want to make sure that what’s being displayed on the market, whether it’s toys or souvenir items, reflects well on the force,” says Chief Supt. Jacques Lemay, director of public affairs for the RCMP in Ottawa.

Meanwhile, there happen to be compelling fiscal reasons for seeking new revenue. In the last year, budget cutting has forced downsizing of the headquarters force in Ottawa, consolidation of some detachments and elimination of the department band.

“You have to look at new ways and innovations to pay for things. . . . We have to live within budget restraints.”

Lemay is working on a twofold program in response. One involves being more vigilant about what the RCMP considers misrepresentations of the force. As an example, the Mounted Police protested a World Wrestling Federation character who dresses up in the characteristic red uniform and bullies his opponents with a fake cattle prod.

“That was a very poor image for our young men and women to be associated with,” Lemay says.

The second aspect is recruiting Canadian corporate executives for a foundation to raise private money for the RCMP’s ceremonial, public relations and community policing functions. The Mounted Police Foundation, still in the formative stage, would act as an auxiliary group to the force.

Lemay envisions using this corporate brain trust as a resource on how the RCMP might better market itself and as a means to attract corporate donations for such programs as victim compensation and drug abuse prevention.

“We’ve never tried to do anything like that, but people have been telling us there are a lot of organizations that would love to be associated with us,” Lemay said. “ . . . The tricky part is to make sure you’re very careful about picking who it is you work with.”

While there have been no public announcements yet about who might serve on this foundation, Lemay says recruitment has been easier than he believed and that the process has moved along.

Whether the RCMP can license its image, and collect fees from the manufacturers of all those souvenirs, may be problematic, although there are lawyers working on it. Canadian law forbids the commercial use of the name or “any pictorial representation of” the RCMP, but the statute is rarely enforced here, and violators in the United States and other foreign countries are beyond the reach of the law.

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As a practical matter, “we’re pretty much in the public domain now,” Lemay concedes.

That’s clear from a visit to the RCMP’s regimental museum, on the grounds of its national training academy in this prairie capital.

On display and in the archives are hundreds of examples of the exploitation of the Mounties for marketing purposes. Nothing seems to be off limits. There are Mountie illustrations on ashtrays, pillowcases, whiskey bottles, sachets, beer labels and toothpaste tubes. There are commemorative plates, tins, buttons, peanut packs and swizzle sticks. Mickey Mouse, Garfield the cat and Barbie all have been dressed in RCMP uniforms for sale here and in the United States. The new Vancouver NBA franchise, scheduled to begin play in 1995, considered adopting the nickname “Mounties,” but backed away. A minor league baseball team in Alberta already uses it, however.

Malcolm J.H. Wake, the genial director of the museum, good naturedly displays examples of this merchandising to a visitor, frowning only at the image of “Malcolm the Mountie,” a character that peddles beer on British television.

“He does things no Mountie would ever do, like walk into a bar in his red serge (uniform) and order a beer and drink it,” Wake sighs. “Knowing British television, he probably does other naughty things too, but I’m not sure.”

There is an entire exhibit devoted to the RCMP and the movies. More than 250 films have been made about the service and Hollywood being Hollywood, accuracy always has been a secondary concern, if any concern at all. They’ve been wrong about the uniforms, the nomenclature, the history, even the name. Hollywood’s Mounties also are a trigger-happy lot, in marked contrast to real RCMP members, who rarely draw their guns.

And sometimes a geography lesson is in order. Wake laughingly points out a poster of the 1954 production of “Saskatchewan,” starring Alan Ladd, that proclaims it was filmed in the glorious Canadian Rockies. It was in fact filmed around Banff in Alberta province, not in Saskatchewan, which is as flat as Kansas.

But while RCMP officials may wince at such gaffes, there’s no doubt the Hollywood heroism often is good for public relations. Canadian historian Pierre Berton notes that the phrase “they always get their man” was popularized by the movies, not real life.

So, the RCMP today offers technical advice to filmmakers. For “North of 60,” a Canadian television series about an RCMP officer in northern Canada, the service even provides the uniforms.

However, “Due South,” the comedy-action television film that served as the pilot for the upcoming series, is drawing no smiles around RCMP headquarters. Lemay frostily notes that the producers declined an offer of advice and assistance, and the production didn’t even get the uniform right, showing the central character wearing a badge on his hat.

The RCMP long has recognized the value of good public relations. It performs an exhibition of horsemanship called the Musical Ride around the world. And there are plenty of RCMP items in the museum gift shop.

“We want to generate a love for the Mounted Police,” Wake says earnestly in his cluttered corner office. “We want a child in trouble to know he or she can go to a Mountie and see him or her as a friend. So if every child in Canada can have a Mountie teddy bear, all the better. . . . The force has lived on its image for years.”

Founded in 1873 as the North West Mounted Police, the force is a principal reason why the settling of the frontier in Canada was far less violent than in the United States. Arriving white settlers found a peacekeeping organization already in place.

“While the popular belief is that the Mounted Police were sent in to protect the settlers from the wild Indians, in fact they were sent in to protect the Indians from the wild settlers, mainly American whiskey traders up from Montana selling rotgut,” notes historian Berton.

Although a paramilitary organization charged with keeping law and order, the RCMP functioned on a much broader scale, Berton says, providing a variety of social services. “They were really civil servants, not policemen.”

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Today, in addition to acting similarly to the FBI as a national police force, the 21,957-member RCMP provides provincial police duties in all Canadian provinces except Ontario and Quebec. It patrols the borders and the waterways and enforces drug, firearms and securities laws.

While the RCMP’s image in the United States has been molded by movies and merchandising, in Canada, real life has resulted in more ambivalent feelings. The force has been used to break strikes and spy on civilians. Recently, as the RCMP has introduced more women into the ranks, there have been allegations of sexual harassment. “Above the Law,” a new book by veteran journalist Paul Palango, purports to expose how investigations were compromised for political reasons.

Polling data, however, continues to show the RCMP generally well regarded by most Canadians.

“I think Canadians are generally proud of the Mounties and it lets us sneer at the FBI and some other agencies, saying we have something much better here than in the States,” says Berton.