By Michael Gams
Centretown’s community police centre has increased the number of its volunteers to stretch office hours and provide more personal service to residents.
Const. Nathan Hoedeman has been managing the centre at Bank and Somerset since November. Since then he has enlisted five new volunteers, bringing the total to 13. But he is still looking for more.
“Because I want the centre to be open longer, I need volunteers to be here doing the administration, answering the phones, dealing with the clients, and then also a group of volunteers to go out and deliver some of the programming,” he says.
Currently, the centre uses volunteers in five different crime prevention programs: Business Watch, Neighbourhood Watch, Home Security, Child Print and Operation Identification.
“If the police are always called for everything, the people don’t do anything to help themselves. [The programs] are what works and this is how you can prevent stuff from happening. It works like education,” Hoedeman says.
Natasha Stamplecoski, one of the centre’s volunteers and nurse at the methadone clinic next door, has been volunteering since last September and says the programs are a good idea.
“The reason that I got involved in working here was because it is next door, and because I want to become a police officer,” she says. As a volunteer, she co-ordinates the child fingerprint program. “Parents can come in and we fingerprint their children and make booklets about every child, in case he or she gets lost.”
The centre also sets up a kiosk at community events such as the Ottawa Exhibition to publicize its activities. Hoedeman welcomes volunteers of all ages and all city communities. He says the centre employs people who are out of work as well as seniors and students.
Nikolas Zuchowicz, 22, a humanities student at Carleton University, has been a volunteer since 2003. He works about four hours a week and is in charge of home security inspections where he deals with people who have been robbed, giving them safety tips to better protect their homes.
“I was looking for something that had a little more for it than profit, that’s why policing interested me,” Zuchowicz says.
He doesn’t mind working for free.
“There are a lot of people out there that want to be volunteers, so it is perfectly reasonable to take advantage of that fact and I imagine it would be very difficult to keep all those centres open continuously and staffed without the functions of the volunteers,” he says.
Currently, seven more people have applied to be volunteers at the centre. The goal is to increase the number of hours the centre is open from six to at least eight hours a day. Hoedeman says the experience offers profits other than money for those who do this kind of unpaid work.
“What they get back is gaining knowledge of working with the police in partnership with the community,” he says.
Office work and being exposed to policing on a daily basis are aspects that really count for volunteers, Hoedeman says.
“All these experiences are valuable and I can write letters or references for them if they are looking for employment. I think more and more employers are looking for that on your resumes. That you’re involved not just to get paid, but also involved in doing the right things.”