Being a police officer is really a unique experience. On the one hand, you see the world through civilian eyes while on the other hand you see beyond what the average citizen sees. This is because, as a police officer, many of life’s illusions are stripped away when you are handed the badge and gun and enter the dark corners of society to deal with the best and worst of humanity.
Most police officers experience a broadening in perspective and realize, fairly quickly, that as much as you want to believe the best in humanity, you ultimately are paid to deal with the worst of it.
You’re probably thinking by now that I am talking about killers, drug dealers, rapists, gangs, thieves and whatever else Hollywood routinely portrays as the scum of the earth.
Ironically, as much as dealing with criminals of this nature is not easy or glamorous work, the worst of humanity only exists if the rest of us do nothing to minimize the conditions that encourage humans to be criminal minded .
At the end of the day, I personally find general apathy more deplorable than criminality.
Of all the criminals I have had a chance to encounter before and after becoming a police officer, few have left me with the impression that they were born criminals, or really enjoyed breaking the law and being judged and labeled as outcasts and misfits of society. Many of them never really had a chance, as they were born into circumstances that limited their options, whether due to poverty,
abusive/neglectful/alcoholic/criminal parents, physiological limitations (learning disability, mental illness, etc), lack of opportunity, or simply because the choices they made (i.e. drug use and addiction) left them unable to make good choices.
I am not minimizing the impact that these individuals have on a community. Criminals often cause others to feel unsafe in their community and addressing criminal behavior and its root causes can be a drain on resources, especially if we focus all our resources on helping people who are not willing to help themselves. The point is, for those of us in a position of influence, privilege and power, how do we find the delicate balance needed to make a difference with the resources available to us?
Currently, we invest a lot of resources at the back end. By this I mean that I rarely see people get concerned about crime until it lands in their backyard. When that happens, people suddenly awake from their apathy and decide to take action and that action is usually to contact the police to tell them that there is a problem that needs to be fixed and the sooner the better.
Police usually receive the highest praise from citizens when any problem they are called about is made to disappear, if only temporarily. Rarely do people express concern as to what happened to the problem as long as they no longer have to deal with it. This strikes me as odd, because if we are talking about systemic and/or cyclical nuisance crimes, such as drug addiction, prostitution, aggressive pan handling, petty thefts, vandalism and graffiti, then know that we have not really solved anything.
Moving the problem to another community only to see it resurface in our community years, months or weeks later means that the traditional approach of reporting overt criminal behavior to police is not a long term or viable solution. It is however, the way crime is historically dealt with in our communities.
What needs to change in order for us to break this cycle? Wishing away a problem or hoping someone else deals with it is exactly the kind of apathy that is as much a problem as the criminal behavior itself.
Beyond police involvement, each community member who feels they have a right to live in a safe and relatively crime free neighbourhood has to look in the mirror and ask himself or herself: “What am I constructively doing today to make this happen?”
I’m sorry if I burst your bubble by telling you that simply calling the police is not enough.
Police have their hands full responding to the overwhelming number of community complaints when what’s really needed is more opportunity to educate community members about what they can do to assist with addressing their community concerns.
As I mentioned before, we officers are in the unique position of living in the communities that we patrol and this gives us a pretty good understanding of what solutions will ultimately work. What I have found is that community members are so focused on getting us to respond to crime in a reactive manner, that this leaves us very little time to engage community members and form partnerships that will address the roots of crime that negatively impact neighbourhoods.
Investing in proactive policing requires a bit of a leap of faith, for both police and the community, as we all have to truly believe in the merits of community based policing. By this I mean the community has to be willing to participate in initiatives that see the police and the community work together to find long-term solutions.
If the community recognized that police play an important role in educating the community on crime prevention strategies that work, they would let it be known that they expect police to be more accessible and proactive minded.
With the advent of technology and urban planning designed to make the car happy and the pedestrian obsolete, foot patrols in every neighbourhood are no longer a reality, yet putting a cop on every block in Manhattan allowed it to take its city back from the crime epidemic that choked it years ago. Why is this?
Well, it was because pedestrians felt safe to walk the streets again. It is also a known fact that when people walk the streets, there is less opportunity for crime to occur, as criminals prefer to ply their trade unnoticed. Why then do we accept that our cities are designed in a way that we have to drive everywhere and are disconnected from each other?
When community members shake their general apathy and invest in their community by working with police and other officials to make a difference it leaves them feeling empowered, as they become a large part of the solution.
The Ottawa police has 16 community police centers across the cty whose mandate is to educate and empower their communities to become passionate about crime prevention because the police know first hand the difference that can be achieved when citizens mobilize to seek long term solutions that benefit everyone.
I personally commend every citizen working tirelessly, whether it is by participating in a community association, a community crime prevention initiative, an official community/police committee or some other solution oriented community organization. Your compassion should be acknowledged and it is your efforts that should be portrayed in the media instead of the highlighting of crime that occurs when we do nothing. Thank you for caring and taking action.
As police officers we are passionate about what we do, but we can only do so much. We need much greater citizen involvement to achieve lasting success. With greater community involvement, along with more Community police centres, community police officers, beat officers, neighbourhood officers, mental health officers, youth intervention and diversion officers and school resource officers, we’ll be able to make a real difference in this community, so that you feel good about living in your own backyard.