Supplied — Dave ConnerMark Twitchell’s homegrown horror movie of September 2008 starred a real murderer: Twitchell himself. In the case that followed, Constable Carmen Fidler was tasked with following and surveilling him.
Twitchell lured a man, under the pretenses of a date with a woman, to his Edmonton garage. It was there that Twitchell committed and filmed the murder in a movie he claimed was inspired by the TV series Dexter.
It was true crime stories like these that attracted Fidler to the world of criminal justice in the first place. Now, the University of Alberta graduate is an Edmonton Police Service (EPS) officer.
Fidler studied criminology at the U of A from 1988 to 1992. As the first of her friends and family to attend university she was unsure of what to expect, but she knew she wanted to study criminology, she said.
Learning from the people in her sorority and attending sports games are some of the fond memories Fidler has from her time at university. Mostly, she remembers how much she liked the atmosphere on campus, she said.
After finishing two years of general arts she volunteered at the Edmonton Remand Centre before successfully applying to the criminology program.
Fidler remembers her criminology classes fondly — one criminology professor in particular, Maurice White, stood out for the help he gave her. It wasn’t until her third or fourth year, after having completed a practicum with EPS, that she decided to apply to join the force.
As a woman in the police force, a lot has changed since Fidler first joined 23 years ago. An “old-school” mentality used to exist where female police officers were seen as small and weak, and unsuitable for the force, she said. The mentality even went so far as to suggest that women only joined to find husbands.
“When I first joined it definitely was different. There were some different attitudes and stereotypes that I had to overcome,” she said. “Nowadays it’s like I’m just another coworker, an equal of everybody else.”
Now that Fidler is a police officer there is no typical day on the job and no typical case.
“It could be anything from shoplifters, parking complaints, to homicide,” she said. “It’s really varied every day.”
That variance is Fidler’s favourite part of the job, she said.
“The different people you get to work with and the different options within the service,” she said. “If you get tired of working in one place, or if you want to learn new things or improve there’s lots of different areas to move around to.”
Fidler advises students interested in joining the police force and pursuing intense cases like the Twitchell case to take the opportunity to speak with current members of the force and to be prepared for every stage of the application process.
“People might leave university thinking ‘Oh well that’s not a career that I hoped for when I went into university,’” she said. “But just know that it actually is a career and there are lots of different options within it.”
