Better policing requires public to play its role
It’s time the community stepped up, Elie Labaky says.
Sir Robert Peel served twice as prime minister of the United Kingdom and in 1829 he established the first Metropolitan Police Force for London at Scotland Yard. However, we remember him today as the father of modern policing through “Peel’s Principles of Policing.”
The Seventh Principle remains the one most frequently quoted: “Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police …”
Today, the city is facing heightened gun crime and gang activity, rupturing public trust in policing, and leaving the reciprocity envisioned by Peel’s Seventh as nothing but a fragmented dot in the horizon. But as the adage goes, it takes two to tango.
The Ottawa Police Service has moved forward in hiring additional law enforcement personnel, specifically 10 more officers to combat a rise in gun and gang activity in the city through assisted funding from the federal government at a cost of $670,000. Furthermore, the organization is investing in training and infrastructure by planning for a new station in the south end of the city for 2021 at a cost of $3.85 million for phase one.
Lastly, the OPS is regularly competing with other services to hire minority officers, hiring five women and six minorities in 2016’s class of 25, with higher numbers in 2017 and 2018. Although there remains work to be done, credit must be given where credit is due.
However, I fail to see the reciprocal engagement from the community.
Individuals and community groups regularly protest police misconduct, over-policing in certain neighbourhoods, and lack of representation within the ranks. Albeit this is understandable to a certain extent, the Ottawa Police Service has made reasonable efforts to remedy and address these issues.
Through its Diversity and Race Relations section, the service is administering mandatory cultural awareness training for new recruits, in addition to establishing a new community equity council to replace the old community police action committee, while proactively attending more diverse community events in search of qualified candidates to fill the ranks.
The direct action response team (DART), a provincially funded subsidiary of the guns and gangs unit, has gone as far as collaborating with the Ontario Justice Education Network (OJEN) by participating in the delivery of a youth-police dialogue program to challenge minority youth’s perception of police. Even police service board members have been proactive in responding to the issues, recognizing the requirement for community engagement. “To get these diverse candidates I think we’re going to have to go and get them,” said Carl Nicholson at a police service board meeting last September.
I have had the privilege of riding with several officers in the past few weeks, noting significant improvement in community engagement, intelligence-gathering and cultural sensitivity despite the Jan. 1, 2017 prohibition on street checks. However, the same cannot be said about the community.
Surely a community and/or neighbourhood plagued with illicit activity would band together and denounce criminal behaviour on its streets by collaborating with police in bringing perpetrators to justice. Sadly, no. Instead, we are regularly berated with the same rhetoric that officers are racist, aggressive, and not representative of Ottawa’s diverse communities. Yet the OPS has further facilitated avenues to handle such matters and conduct through easily accessible public complaints and strict disciplinary measures. For some odd reason, the community is still not satisfied?
The community ought to re-evaluate its reciprocal interests, referring to Peel’s Seventh; they are the police, just as much as the police are the public. Consequently, the public must also play a proactive role by reporting criminal behaviour, co-operating with investigations, and grooming youths interested in pursuing a career in policing. The responsibility does not lie solely on police.