Safety for those who keep us safe
C
st. John Davidson died a hero on Monday.
The Abbotsford police officer was shot and killed after responding to a possible stolen vehicle.
Davidson’s career – both in Canada and in his native England – will be remembered for a devotion to people and public safety.
As Canadians, we demand and expect much of our police officers in the RCMP and in city and provincial forces.
Our role as citizens, both individually and collectively through government, should be to help officers do their jobs while staying safe themselves, so they can return home after each shift to their own friends and families.
For the most part, we already do a pretty good job.
Statistics Canada reports that 144 police officers were killed in action between 1961 and 2015, with 10 of those deaths happening in B.C. Of those 144, three of them died in a single incident in Moncton in 2014 and four were gunned down in an ambush on an Alberta farm in 2005.
Contrast that to the United States where 46 officers died in the line of duty in 2015 alone.
To be fair to our American cousins, we should make an apples-toapples comparison.
There are roughly 700,000 police officers in the U.S. with just less than 70,000 in this country, which makes the number of those in uniform per capita roughly the same in both countries.
In the last 10 years in the U.S., the average number of police deaths has been 50. If Canada was identical, we would see five officer deaths each year but we see roughly three.
It’s also worth noting that American police officers are much safer than they used to be. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, twice as many cops died on the job as they do today, despite the fact there were 40 per cent fewer men and women in uniform than today.
Still, even with that improvement, American police officers are almost twice as likely to die on the job as their Canadian brethren.
Guns, of course, makes a huge difference, in the number of guns, the number of people owning them and the killing capacity in many of those firearms, which are legal stateside but largely prohibited for private ownership in Canada.
Yet it’s not just guns. There is also a more cavalier culture in the U.S. regarding those in uniform. American police officers and other first responders are expected to put themselves in harm’s way far more frequently and with much greater abandon than here in Canada.
For example, police regularly call off high-speed chases of suspects because of the risk of harm to the public in this country. Down south, driving fast is no excuse to let someone get away.
In Canada, if a single police officer had arrived as the shooter was leaving the church after the Sunday morning massacre in Sutherland Springs, Texas, he or she would most certainly have opened fire but most likely while using the vehicle for protection. When the gunman fled in his vehicle, the of- ficer would have followed at a safe distance, reporting position and calling for backup.
In Texas, it was a nearby civilian with his own gun who exchanged shots with the killer, an incredibly brave move that could easily have turned tragically stupid, either for the man himself or for an innocent bystander, killed or wounded by a bullet from the gun of the wouldbe hero.
If that’s what American residents will do, it’s understandable that they insist upon even more courage from trained first responders and those in uniform likewise demand more of themselves when facing a similar situation.
Fortunately in Canada, there is a much higher expectation that emergency personnel will keep themselves safe while keeping us safe. Running into burning buildings to pull out people trapped inside is the stuff of movies and soap operas, rarely done in real life and only after careful consideration that the risk of harm to the firefighters is minimal and the likelihood that the person will die without immediate intervention is high.
Even with that more cautious culture, men and women police officers still die in uniform in Canada because they answer the call and run towards the threat, not away from it.
For this, we must not only be thankful but, as citizens, we must also do all we can to help protect our protectors.
— Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout