A rough job some times
Not many of us were left with a smile after Wednesday’s Citizen’s Policy Academy meeting.
It’s not that the class was boring, we were just hit with some heavier learning material and it definitely showed us how hard being a police officer can be at times, but also how rewarding it can be to do a good, thorough job as an officer.
I’ll start with the last case we looked at, which was the story of a three-year-old boy who was abused really, really badly by his mother’s boyfriend at the time.
While I won’t go into a lot of specifics, the boy was kept in his closet for 17-hour periods, alone, and this was after being burned and beaten by the man. The bruises this child had were just terrible looking, and I was shocked he lived through this abuse at a young age.
As a journalist, I know interviewing young children can be difficult, and you’re lucky to get full, clear ideas out of them — assuming they’ll actually talk to you.
I can’t even imagine trying to get this child covered in bruises and wounds to try to tell me, a complete stranger, what had happened to him.
Justice was brought for the child, and the presenter says he is in good hands now.
Our second presentation was on the priority street crime unit, which seems like one of the coolest jobs to have with the MHPS — I base that strictly off the fact that they wear street clothes 99 per cent of the time while working.
This unit is in charge of a lot of things, but one of its big ones is tracking down and returning stolen goods.
One interesting nugget from this presentation was how the police get their information.
So much of their information is found on Kijiji, Facebook and Craigslist and they also use sources throughout the community, but it really took me by surprise how much information is available to people who look in the darker corners of the internet.
The first presentation was from the MHPS’s lawyer, and how the MHPS deals with complaints against its officers.
As expected, the serious complaints against the officers can take years to go through legally.
Our presenter also stressed how important it is for police officers to take the most thorough notes possible, because they can, and will be, exposed in court if there is even the slightest messup or oversight in the notes.
Mo Cranker will write a column for each Saturday detailing his thoughts and experiences on the Citizens’ Police Academy. There will also be pictures and video posted online to the Medicine Hat News Facebook page whenever he does something cool.