BREAKING ICE ON COURT
How Ottawa police are building relationships through basketball
In the middle of a Russell Heights gym, an Ottawa police officer catches a basketball thrown his way. Standing still, the ball slashes through his legs and then snakes around his back before he offers it up in front of him, like a gift, to his teammate — a kid in an afterschool program who’s invited police to come play.
In gymnasiums across the city, in fact, the Ottawa Police HoopStars are volunteering their time and energy to build not just basketball skills but bridges with the priority communities they serve, where police are ever-present but trust in them is harder to come by.
“We go there with the kids, they try the uniform on, we break the ice through basketball and then we have a conversation,” says Const. Chabine Tucker.
Tucker, who’s been a cop since 2008, is a founding member of the initiative, which formed from the force’s basketball team in May 2017.
OPS has a variety of sports teams made up of officers who play in tournaments or police leagues. The basketball team plays in an annual memorial tournament, and at the end of last year’s Tucker told his teammates that he wanted to do more outreach, but didn’t know how.
“A couple guys said we could just go out more and instead of just playing, we could start engaging.”
On the court, it’s drills and basketball skill-building, but with every conversation, every joke, every layup come the intangibles that make it worthwhile — a genuine connection between police and kids.
At a game at the Dempsey Community Centre in Russell Heights, officers are cognizant that the uniform imbues them with both authority and fear, and makes them easily recognizable as either friend or foe.
Officers play in their basketball gear, not their uniforms, and instead have kids line up to do drills that see them put on Kevlar vests and standard-issue boots before dribbling down the length of the court, trying to make a basket.
The kids smile as they try to run in boots several sizes too big, and applause rings out with every shot made.
The kids at the community centre are taking part in the Christie Lake Kids after-school program, which has invited the police team to play ball.
“To us, it’s really important for our kids to have positive role models and build relationships with officers that work in town. Sometimes in the neighbourhoods that these kids live in, and in particular in the Russell Heights community, they don’t have the most positive relationships with the police, and sometimes even have a bit of a fear. So we really want them to know that the police officers are their friends and they’re just like us,” says Natalie Benson, director of fundraising and communications.
Lower-income neighbourhoods do see more violence, and as a result residents may only associate police with the harder aspects of policing, Benson says.
Events like this make it clearer that police are “there to help us and, if you need something, you can turn to a police officer at any point.”
Amy MacDonald, who supervises the Christie Lake Kids program, in Russell Heights, says for that community, extracurriculars are “crucial” because they get the kids “off the streets and into positive programming.”
Christie Lake Kids offers free programs to kids in the neighbourhood who might not otherwise be able to take part in activities and sports because of a variety of barriers, including costs. Most of the families served by the organization don’t have a family car. If parents are working, they ’re working shift work and can’t keep up with a sports team’s schedule.
The drop-in programs at the Dempsey Community Centre mean kids can come and participate in sports or activities without the stress of wondering if their parents can afford it.
In Russell Heights, “ball is life,” MacDonald says.
Central to the community is a large basketball court, surrounded by subsidized housing. In the summer, it’s the gathering place where the entire community comes together.
“Not only is it important for our kids to see police officers as regular beings, without their uniforms on, but I also think it’s such an amazing thing to connect, not just in verbal conversation, but in doing something that they love and sharing that with the officers. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Tucker himself grew up two blocks away from the community centre.
“There’s a kid that’s going to come through here that’s going to be a mini-version of me, I know it, and I never had this type of experience with police officers coming up, so (I’m happy) if I can give that back and show that we’re human beings and that we’re just normal guys.”
But the efforts in Russell are the same as the efforts the team is making in other communities, from Michele Heights to Caldwell, and in some high schools, too, as the team attempts to “humanize the badge.”
The team is made up of a variety of cops — male, female, black, white, tactical door breacher, community police officer, new recruit, veteran.
But the force has long said that it needs to reflect the communities it serves. Recent figures show that nearly 85 per cent of Ottawa police officers are white. For racialized kids who play basketball in these communities, seeing that there are officers who look like them, lived where they live and love the sport they do is a mirror of potential.
The team’s been playing basketball for years but what’s new is the “exchange of information, exchange of feelings, exchange of emotion, exchange of experiences that’s happening now that’s really rewarding,” Tucker says. “It’s kind of what I really got in to policing for, anyways.”
The games include drills and a scrimmage. All the games end with a question-and-answer period in which officers agree to be open and honest.
“How do you get big?” young boys in Russell Heights asked, with cops directing the question to the most muscular officer on the team. “Have you played Fortnite?” But they ask, too, about the best and worst parts of the job, what it’s like to be pepper-sprayed, what they would do if a bad guy “spilled drugs in your face,” and whether you can be a cop if you have a criminal record.
And here a warning from police: Understand who your friends are, who you associate with, the activities you do, the words you speak, what you put online. Any employer will check “to see what you’re about, ’cause that will tell a lot of the truth about who you are.”
Other kids have asked more difficult questions: Why do they only see police when bad things happen and why aren’t there more officers of colour in their neighbourhoods?
For Tucker, these events help answer those questions. It’s about being in the community not just to make an arrest, patrol high-crime areas or kick in a neighbour’s door.
And for his teammates who lace up their sneakers on their days off or at the end of their shifts, sometimes — even bringing their own children to the gymnasiums around the city to make it all work — it’s part of being seen as more than just an arm of the law. They are parents, neighbours, coaches and they want to be seen as role models.
The team hasn’t yet said no to anyone who has invited them in. In April alone, they had nine events. In all of 2017, from May to December, they did 18.
“This is what we envisioned it to be, where it’s an open forum and kids are free to ask us questions — they can see us in the communities if we’re out on the road and if we’re in uniform they feel comfortable to say, ‘Hey,’ ” Tucker says.
But that name? HoopStars. The original name of the police team was the Flatfooters — a play on historic slang for police officers — and Tucker says the team wanted something more recognizable with some splash to resonate with the kids and larger community. They even have an Instagram account. The hoop represents the basketball hoop.
“And do we believe we’re stars? Ah … some of us are actually pretty good, some of us have played professional basketball, so I would say yes.”
This is what we envisioned it to be, where it’s an open forum and kids are free to ask us questions.