‘POSITIVE STEPS’ ON REFORM AT CPS
In a year-end interview with Postmedia’s Yolande Cole, Calgary police commission chair Brian Thiessen highlighted some of the main issues that came before the oversight body during 2017.
Q What have been some of the biggest concerns for the commission this year, and have they been addressed by the service?
A Our key concerns for the year were our work on gender diversity, wanting the service to increase the amount of women in leadership roles, better incorporate diversity in hiring new recruits. We obviously had a budget approval process that we had to go through this year, so we spent a lot of time reviewing CPS budget and then presenting to city council on budget. There’s been a significant reduction by the service on break and enters, so they’ve done a ton of work on break and enters and that task force has brought numbers down. We’re also really happy with work that the service has done both in retaining former Chief Justice (Neil) Wittmann on use-of-force review and then also recently they’ve done some great work on finding less-lethal options.
Q What kind of progress do you think the police service has made on human-resources reforms?
A The service has made some good progress. They’ve increased the amount of resources dedicated, they’ve spent significant time on their workplace review. They’ve come up with a plan for acting on the seven-point plan the commission brought to them on diversity in the workplace. They’ve created a civilian HR managing position and they’re about to hire an independent workplace concern adviser. Those are all positive steps. I’m comfortable with the pace of reform. I think the commission, for the most part, is comfortable with the pace of reform. I think most commission members and myself understood that changing a workplace and changing work attitudes, informal policies and procedures and formal ones, is a multi-year project.
Q The public portion at the end of police commission meetings has become emotional at times. What has that been like for you as chair to listen to?
A As a human being there are difficult concerns to hear and, you can tell, agonizing in some situations for individuals to bring them in front of the public, in front of the media. I think it’s a good thing for a civilian oversight body like ours to hear actual concerns from individuals who clearly are genuine and have significant concerns. I think it’s good for service exec to hear that as well. It humanizes the issue. It’s easy to talk about gender diversity reform in a meeting room, and it brings home the human aspect of it when you see individuals who are affected, which is why we’ve encouraged them — continue to come forward, hold us accountable.
Q What did the commission’s annual employee survey of police service members find?
A We’ve worked through a lot of tough issues with the service and the service is doing a lot of hard work on making themselves better, and also more transparent and accountable. That, for sure, will have an impact on morale and satisfaction. There’s probably room for improvement on communication between executive leadership and service members about what their priorities are and why they make decisions they’re making.
We have concerns in morale. They were pressed really thin. I think they were very happy to hear that we got a budget to hire new members to take that pressure off. So we’re addressing that. But, of course, we’ll hire classes and it takes us six to 18 months to get those classes actually in place, so that pressure’s still on for the service members.
Q How will the recent budget increase affect the police service going forward?
A It allows them to hire new service members and stay on track for planning for service needs, which also has the impact of they can hire ahead of attrition. It allows them to move forward with the body-worn cameras program. I think that’s really important. The service is committed to it, Calgarians have told the commission that they want body-worn cameras and I always say it’s really nice we don’t have a situation like you do in some U.S. jurisdictions where there’s a fight over that — the service wants it, the commission in their oversight role wants it and the public wants it.