KEEPING THE PEACE

Winnipeg Police Need To Abandon War Mentality

YOU will not find the term law enforcement officer in the Criminal
Code of Canada. The term that is used is peace officer. There is a
big difference between keeping the peace and enforcing the law. Peace
keeping is a more proactive and preventive form of policing, while
law enforcement is more of a reactive approach.

The previous police chief of the Winnipeg Police Service, David
Cassels, fully understood this difference and demonstrated this
understanding on his first day on the job in May 1996. Cassels had to
face a large delegation of community groups from the Lord Selkirk
Park public housing development who were calling upon city council
for neighbourhood foot patrol officers to work in the local community
because of the growth of gangs, prostitution and drug trafficking.
Half of the housing units in this public housing development were
vacant and boarded up because people were too scared to live in this
neighbourhood.

Cassels supported the request of the Lord Selkirk Park residents and
assigned neighbourhood foot patrol officers to begin working
immediately in the local community. Within a year, all the boarded-up
housing units were re-opened as people found that Lord Selkirk Park
was once again a safe place to live. Cassels went on to establish
over 20 of these neighbourhood foot patrol officer positions in high
crime neighbourhoods throughout the inner city of Winnipeg in his
first six months on the job.

Chief Jack Ewatski has dismantled community policing over the past
number of years. He has recently promoted Operation Clean Sweep as a
strategy to address safety concerns in high crime neighbourhoods.
This policing approach paints entire neighbourhoods as the place
"where the bad guys live" and innocent citizens are often victimized
by the police services' over zealousness to win the "war on crime."

Chris Braiden, the retired police superintendent who was the
architect of community policing in Edmonton points out, "if I am
thinking of war, I am looking for enemies; if I am thinking of peace,
I am looking for allies."

He believes that the police need to do a better job of building
relationships with community residents, just like the old British
"Bobbies" used to do, in order to improve public safety in inner city
neighbourhoods. Sir Robert Peel, the founder of modern policing,
identified that "the power of police to fulfill their functions and
duties is dependent on the public approval of their existence,
actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain
public respect." The Winnipeg Police Service has lost the trust and
respect of a growing number of inner city residents. It's hard for
the police to build positive relationships with residents of the
community if there is a "revolving door" of police officers coming
into these neighbourhoods simply to "chase and arrest the bad guys."

In order to be effective peace officers, the police need to learn
about the strengths of the local community as well as the challenges
of the neighbourhood. If the police only relate to the community by
dealing with the criminal element, it is inevitable that the police
will become jaded with and disrespectful of inner city neighbourhoods
as they will only develop a one dimensional view of the community.

Chris Braiden argues that police need to make better use of existing
policing resources in order to improve services to the community.
Braiden conducted a workload analysis study of the Edmonton Police
Service in 1991 and found that only 34 per cent of the police
officers handled the 172,000 dispatched calls for service. This 34
per cent of the police force was also responsible for initiating 85
per cent of the criminal charges. He questions what the other 66 per
cent of the police officers were doing if they were not responding to
calls for service.

The average citizen would be surprised how few police officers are
actually out patrolling the streets each day. The 1991 workload
analysis study of the Edmonton Police Service indicated that only 25
per cent of police officers were involved in general patrol duties.
Everyone else was in some form of specialist back up role or
unavailable due to vacation time, sick leave or days off.

Between 1980 and 1990, the Edmonton Police Service hired 45
additional police officers but had 72 less officers on the street;
between 1990 and 1994 when the police service shifted towards a
community policing approach -- four additional officers were hired
and there was 92 more officers on the street; between 1994 and 2004
with a shift away from community policing -- 125 more officers were
added to the force but there were 124 less officers doing street
level policing.

More funding for police officers does not necessarily result in more
police officers on the street due to personnel deployment decisions
that promote the use of specialized units rather than general patrol officers.

One of the alternatives to improve police accountability in our city
is to establish a civilian police commission to oversee the operation
of the police service. Of the 10 big cities in Canada, Winnipeg is
the only city that does not have some form of a civilian police
commission. A key role for a police commission is to establish a
vision and policy direction for how the citizens of the community
want their police service to operate.

A police commission, could for example, set an objective for the
Winnipeg Police Service to find a better balance between reactive and
proactive policing. Inner city residents want the crack and crystal
meth houses closed down, they want the gang issues to be addressed,
and they want to have safer neighbourhoods. In order to accomplish
this, the Winnipeg Police Service needs to deploy more officers on
the street as a way of doing business instead of relying on expensive
specialized initiatives like Operation Clean Sweep. While cranking up
the testosterone makes for good headlines, it does not necessarily
address the long term challenge of keeping the peace in inner city
neighbourhoods.