Money won’t solve low morale, says councillor
Stress for police cited as problem
Plummeting morale in the Calgary Police Service won’t be reversed with money alone, says a member of the city’s police commission.
Coun. Ward Sutherland, one of two city council representatives on the police commission board, said the findings of a recent survey on police working conditions didn’t come as a shock and attributed the decline in morale, in part, to what he refers to as a “new culture of accountability” within the force.
“The results are not surprising at all,” he said. “It’s a cultural change, and it’s normal for this to happen.”
Released Thursday, the results of the annual survey of more than 1,300 civilian and sworn CPS employees puts morale within the organization at record-low levels. The negative outlook was attributed to high workloads, increased stress and a lack of confidence in the service’s senior management.
“There’s also a strain on resources, which we’re all aware of and why I was pushing for the additional money for the 55 new officers,” Sutherland said, referring to council’s recent move to add $14.3 million to the police budget.
While new boots on the ground will eventually reduce workloads, Sutherland said it’s far from a onestop solution. “It’s just one part of the puzzle,” he said. “That’s why, for the first time in history, we said we were not going to allow a budget cut. It’s a paradigm shift, you can’t fix everything with money ....”
The issues with morale, said Calgary Police Association president Les Kaminksi, go far deeper than a shortage of front-line officers.
In a speech to a Nov. 9 joint meeting of the association, police commission and CPS, Kaminski cited a mutual lack of trust between its members and the executive, and took both the executive and commission to task for their lack of support for his members.
“A successful policing organization is built on trust — it’s the foundation,” Kaminski said in the speech, a copy of which was obtained by Postmedia. It is scheduled to be published in the next issue of the association’s 10-4 Magazine. “Right now, there is no trust of the executive — the members question: Where is the commission’s oversight?”
In the speech, Kaminski criticized the tone of messaging coming from chief’s office, referencing a high-profile incident earlier this year that saw a Calgary police officer face charges for allegedly pointing a firearm during a traffic stop.
“The press release and media scrum presented only a few facts — the prevalent one being that the offender gave this member the finger,” Kaminski’s speech reads.
“This single factor was misrepresented, and the ensuing message was inaccurate — the result was that the motivation of the officer was unfairly and detrimentally portrayed.”
This messaging, he alleged, has convinced the community that the Calgary Police Service is a corrupt organization, and is destroying the public’s confidence in the police.
“Four years ago, this service had the highest morale of any major police service in Canada — that is not the sign of a corrupt organization,” he said.
“If the service won’t, is it not the commission’s duty to explain the integrity of this organization in a way that gives the community confidence in us again?”