New city police officers reflect cultural diversity

Latest graduating class includes people who speak a wide variety of languages

Manpreet Malhotra spent nearly a year training to become a police officer, going through an intense battery of mental and physical testing along with two dozen other recruits in the Edmonton Police Service’s latest graduating class.

But the toughest part wasn’t the physical training.

“Communication,” the newly minted constable said Friday, when asked about the most challenging part of becoming a police officer. “It took me a lot of time to get used to talking to people, understanding their problems.”

When it comes to communicating, Malhotra has more tools at his disposal than most.

Malhotra crossed the stage Friday at city hall with the 27 other members of the Edmonton Police Service’s 140th recruit training class.

It was a polyglot group. A police news release said the class includes members who are fluent in Arabic, Punjabi, Hindi, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Cantonese, Korean and Mandarin, in addition to English and French.

Malhotra himself speaks Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu. He immigrated to Canada in 2011 and studied accounting in Ontario before coming to Edmonton.

For three years, Malhotra drove a truck while working toward becoming a permanent resident, followed by a stint as an Edmonton Transit driver.

Malhotra dreamed of becoming a police officer, saying he was inspired by his late grandfather, a member of the Indian army.

“He just motivated me so much since my childhood. I’ve always wanted to become a law enforcement member,” he said.

He was drawn to Edmonton because unlike some policing agencies, the police service accepts applications from permanent residents who are not yet Canadian citizens.

His class included recruits from India, Croatia, Serbia and the United Kingdom, although Malhotra said he was the only non-citizen.

During training, he was taken on “numerous” calls as a translator.

Edmonton police launched a recruitment campaign last year aimed at diversifying the service’s ranks.

Language proficiency is especially important in a city that saw some of the fastest growth in socalled “immigrant languages” in the last census.

One of the police service’s goals is to recruit more “culturally experienced” officers, defined as anyone who has “credible cultural training, experience or (speaks) a second language.”

Edmonton police aimed to interview 217 such applicants last year, according a report to the police commission. However, only 158 made it in front of an interviewer.

Malhotra was joined at Friday’s ceremony by his mother and father, who travelled from the Indian state of Punjab to see him. He’s excited to get to work as a patrol officer in the city’s fast-growing southeast division.