What should our police forces know before they hit the streets?

OTTAWA—British Columbia recently released its report “Transforming Policing and Community Safety in British Columbia." Essentially, the province and municipalities realized they have no control over police forces, especially the RCMP. That’s a thought to keep municipal mayors up at night. The two-year anniversary of George Floyd's death is in a few weeks and police continue to disproportionately target Indigenous people and Black Canadians in our country. In 2021, 60 people were shot by police—half of them were Indigenous. Some of these shootings were during a “wellness check," a horrendous oxymoron. Then we have the whispers of the "fifth element" of alt-right and white supremacy in police forces and the lack of accountability of policing, due to secretive police boards with unclear-to-no-lines of accountability to the public. But the truth may be that this is the system we built. It’s a chaotic mess of municipal, provincial, First Nations and national forces, all using different technologies and surprisingly quick training requirements: 26 weeks makes an RCMP officer. Do they teach negotiation and mediation? Do they teach about good communication across cultures? Who knows? The RCMP depot training curriculum is not even available to the public. Canadians need to take a hard look at how we build police forces, starting with the training. We don’t need any more police officers straight out of a remarkably short training session and armed with weapons, seeing danger everywhere and all amped up to take citizens down. We need police officers with judgment and lots of training. Police officers need to know about cultural competence, meaning, they cannot act on unconscious bias nor on racist beliefs about others. And if cadets do act on racist beliefs, that should be an automatic dismissal. If police officers today make derisive comments about Indigenous peoples or Black Canadians, that should be an automatic dismissal. Police officers need to know about mental health and illness. Until this country starts to fund mental health prevention programs, police will continue to be called to deal with neighbours in mental health crises. Let me state the obvious fact—a mental health crisis is not a crime. If you saw a neighbour fall on the street and fracture a bone—a health crisis—you wouldn’t call the police to have that individual cuffed and arrested. But this is what we are doing to neighbours in mental health crises. To cover up our deep guilt about demanding the police deal with "that stranger," we try to say that person is dangerous. What a horrible stigma to place on neighbours facing a crisis of an illness of the heart and mind. Here’s another fact: it’s not the mental health challenge that is dangerous, it is the stigma that kills. Police officers need to be trained to understand mental illness as a crisis in which they should not be involved, but because of our failure as a society, by not funding mental wellness, they are forced to step in. So they need to bring empathy, not punishment as the mindset. Empathy for others is quite a complicated construct; and something that comes with life experience and gained wisdom. There is an argument that we should demand that people have life experience before applying to police academies. Otherwise, police will most likely escalate every single mental health crisis they encounter, and the life of our neighbours will be risked. The first tool of a police officer is wisdom, and the second is judgment. It’s not a Smith & Wesson, or a Glock. We have to rebuild the training regimes for police officers, or we will continue to get the results that we have today. Rose LeMay is Tlingit from the West Coast and the CEO of the Indigenous Reconciliation Group. She writes twice a month about Indigenous inclusion and reconciliation. In Tlingit worldview, the stories are the knowledge system, sometimes told through myth and sometimes contradicting the myths told by others. But always with at least some truth. The Hill Times

What should our police forces know before they hit the streets?

The first tool of a police officer is wisdom, and the second is judgment. It’s not a Smith & Wesson, or a Glock. We have to rebuild the training regimes for police officers, or we will continue to get the results that we have today.

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What should our police forces know before they hit the streets?

The first tool of a police officer is wisdom, and the second is judgment. It’s not a Smith & Wesson, or a Glock. We have to rebuild the training regimes for police officers, or we will continue to get the results that we have today.

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