No Guff From This Police Chief

Vernon White, Ottawa's new police chief, is quickly proving to be the
real deal.

In his first three months on the job, the chief has gotten into
controversies over crack pipes, surveillance cameras and
support-our-troops ribbons. None of them has made a dent in his image
as a blunt-speaking straight shooter. He's asking for a budget
increase of nearly 10 per cent, and he's going to get it. He's gaining
ground in his campaign to get a youth drug treatment centre and he's
won over the president of the police association.

Not a bad start.

Here's how different this guy is: While previous chiefs have given
limited access to the media and were typically guarded in their
comments, White's the sort of person who seeks out the hard-nosed
columnist and invites him along for a couple of hours of driving
around the city, just to shoot the breeze. Ask any question you like.

The invitation was not an image-buffing session. White is what he is,
and he's not going to spend a minute trying to persuade you otherwise.
He says what he thinks and that's that. White is a breath of fresh air
in a politician-laden city where one automatically assumes that when
someone in public life says one thing, he means the opposite.

The new chief is neither interested in, nor bothered by, the kind of
little manufactured crises the media specialize in. For him, the
controversy over support-our-troops ribbons on police cars is simply a
non-event. Of course police support our troops. What's the issue? he
wonders.

It's not that White lacks intellectual subtlety. He has multiple
degrees, has taught at three universities and is co-writing a
criminology text. He just has a knack for separating out what's real.

The interview takes place on the road because White is more
comfortable behind the wheel than he is in an office. "I'm not going
to say I'm A-D-D, but I don't like to just sit. I'm not a long meeting
guy," White says.

The chief's new Honda CRV doesn't look much like a police vehicle, but
watch out. If the chief's in uniform, he's on duty. He has already
pulled over a couple of drivers who cut him off and nabbed one unlucky
crook who came running out of a store with an armload of stolen
Senators' T-shirts.

Being out on the street gives the chief a feel for what's really going
on. He recently accompanied officers on a prostitution sweep and said
the number of addicts on the street, and the shape they are in, was
"eye-opening."

"Everyone I saw was high, or looking for money to get
high."

As we drove around the downtown, the one thing White wanted to make
really clear is that we need to do something about this city's drug
problem.

When you have people on the streets who are so desperate for drugs
that they will break into a car to get loose change or into a house to
steal CDs they see through a window, you know something is wrong. A
lot of the low-level criminality we face here is tied to drug
addiction, White says, and the way to cut crime is to attack the drug
use.

White obviously knows that many people think enforcing drug laws is
old-fashioned, but he argues that marijuana is much stronger than it
used to be and crack cocaine is a really big problem because it's so
cheap and accessible.

The police recently arrested 30 drug dealers, but White's real focus
is getting a residential drug treatment centre here. Believe it or
not, young people from Ottawa needing 24/7 treatment are being shipped
to Thunder Bay. We do have day treatment programs here, but White
thinks that if people attend a program all day, then are back on the
street at night, they are going to slip into their old habits.

The city and the provincial government have each contributed $25,000
toward a study of what's needed. A 48-bed, $8-million treatment centre
is proposed. The study will be complete by the end of the year. It's a
start, but this is a shameful failure to discharge a provincial
responsibility.

White boosted morale and won police association president Charles Momy
over when he quickly settled a lingering dispute about pay for
officers acting as staff sergeants. Management had taken the stance
that they shouldn't get the pay because they weren't fulfilling all
the duties of the job. White was easily persuaded that the practice
wasn't fair and put an end to it.

"I'm different from most chiefs. I look for a process to resolve
conflicts quickly," he says.

"It sent a pretty clear message that he's going to do things
differently," Momy says.

The big challenge for the chief is trying to reorganize the police
service to get more people available to respond to calls from the
public. He's taking a methodical approach, having a senior officer
conduct an intensive study of who does what. Results are a year away.
Getting more efficiency from our police service is critical for both
budget-pressed councillors and the public.

The police union head is still somewhat cautious, remembering the last
chief also started with a great show of interest in the rank and file.
"If what's happening now is still happening next year, we will have
determined that he's for real," Momy says.

Bet on it.