Mr. Mayor, stop picking fights with cops
For some time now, Mayor Jim Watson has engaged in a war of words with rank-and-file Ottawa police officers over their dissatisfaction with Chief Charles Bordeleau’s leadership, basically telling them to take a hike.
The latest, as reported by the Citizen’s David Reevely, has Watson telling off an anonymous police officer who criticized the mayor for tweeting about a meeting he had on public safety with Bordeleau.
“This is what, your 3rd highly publicized meeting in as many years, yet the shootings not only continue but get worse,” the man claiming to be an Ottawa patrol officer tweeted. “Your Chief of Police does not know what he’s doing and has completely lost the confidence of front line cops.”
Watson shot back: “Too bad you hide behind the anonymity of social media.”
This is rather unseemly and should stop. A mayor should be above petty grievances and settling of scores. We elect a mayor to concentrate on the big picture and find solutions to the major problems facing society. Watson should spend his time finding real solutions to the creeping dysfunction in the Ottawa Police Service — not on verbal skirmishes with frustrated officers.
It has long been clear that the Ottawa police union and many of its members do not like the way Bordeleau runs the service and would be happy to see him go. But that’s not their decision to make.
Watson and the police services board are right to resist their pressure, because if rank-andfile can dictate who becomes chief and how the service is run, we will never see the end of it.
That said, what everyday police officers need and deserve is to be heard, to have their complaints
What everyday police officers need and deserve is to be heard.
and grievances taken seriously by their political masters, and to see appropriate solutions. This doesn’t seem to be happening.
Everyone in the city knows that all is not well with our police service. Relations between large sections of the community and the police are frail at best. Allegations of racism and lack of diversity haunt the service. Rank-and-file officers believe senior executives have one rule for themselves and another for everybody else when it comes to disciplinary matters.
Many officers believe promotion depends not on how well you perform, but in whose good graces you are. Think of Insp. Samir Bhatnagar, whom the police board acknowledges was passed over for promotion because he is part of a small group of senior officers who have been “openly critical, defiant and insubordinate in its dealings with the chief.”
In other words, if you don’t toe the chief ’s line, your path to promotion can be cut off.
It is disingenuous for Watson to say that officers should speak out publicly. If you are an Ottawa police officer and you see someone as senior as an inspector being blackballed for complaining loudly, you’d be foolish to take your grievances public. No officer wants to destroy his or her career.
A big part of the problem is that the police services board has cut itself off from ordinary police officers. The board seems to think its job is to stand by Bordeleau at every turn, and has made little or no effort to open channels to rank-and-file officers, to listen to them and find out what’s bugging them.
That’s poor management and oversight. The thing is, despite all the talk, rising gun violence has left many communities constantly on edge. In 2013, there were 32 shootings, rising to 49 the year after. In 2015, shootings went down slightly to 46, then up to 68 in 2016, with a record high 74 last year. So far this year, there have been 27.
Bordeleau is obviously important to fighting crime. But Watson should not make the mistake of thinking the only thing that matters is what the chief says. He should stop picking fights with individual police officers and find a way to reach out to them.
One assumes they all want the same thing: a safe city.