To swerve and neglect: Police avoiding contact

with it the possibility of a racial profiling allegation, winding up in front of a disciplinary tribunal or human rights body, media scrutiny, a viral YouTube video or a judge finding they breached Charter rights. These are the kinds of things that officers perceive can not only ruin their careers, but their lives.

The further along officers get in their careers, the more likely they are to de-police.

“There’s a massive downside to (proactive policing), and I think they can clearly realize that,” Brown said.

The crux of front-line policing has always been officers responding to 911 calls for service.

“That is the core function of their job,” Brown said. “When the computer (inside the cruiser) beeps, you respond to the call, go and address the call. You do what has to be done.”

Driven by self-preservation, officers will park their cruisers, with a cup of coffee in hand and simply wait to be deployed.

Decades ago, this would have been a subgroup of officers whose behaviours would have been chalked up to laziness. Now it’s more widespread and is a calculated decision based on individual and colleague experience.

Others said they drove the speed limit, to “doomsday scenario calls” — where a racialized person might be exhibiting mental health issues and behaving violently. Officers know there will be video taken and they might have to use force and fear the repercussions.

Officers are most likely to de-police situations out of fear of interacting with a racialized person or those with mental health issues. The gender and sexuality of members of the public they could interact with also weigh on officers’ minds, but to a much lesser extent.

Ottawa police data on officers’ self-initiated calls and street checks have been steadily declining year over year for a decade, showing that proactive policing is down. The city force recently released data on the number of “regulated interactions” — formerly “street checks” — officers conducted in 2017. New Ontario legislation has regulated a practice that disproportionately saw racialized young men being stopped by police and asked for their personal information.

Brown called it a “confluence of two different factors” — new legislation that brings with it a marked change in protocol that officers are reluctant to adopt and the same cost-benefit analysis that officers have been increasingly weighing with any type of proactive policing.

“There’s really no way to police de-policing,” Brown said.