RCMP deputy commissioner Peter Henschel has a theory why Prince George has produced a disproportionately high number of senior police officers over the years.
As a regional centre and transportation hub, Henschel said a lot of different people come through the community, which gives young officers a chance to experience a wide range of policing opportunities.
"You get exposure to so many different kinds of aspects to policing here, yet at the same time it's still small enough that a member can have a file and work on it - they're not always moving on to the next call," Henschel said on Friday during a visit to his old stomping grounds. "They have the opportunity to develop good investigative skills."
The RCMP has seven deputy commissioners who report to the country's highest ranking police officer commissioner Bob Paulson - and two of them got their start in Prince George in the 1980s.
For both Henschel and deputy commissioner Craig Callens, Prince George was the place where they cut their teeth in general duty policing as they embarked on careers that have taken them to the senior executive levels within the force. Working alongside Henschel and Callens in the early 1980s in Prince George was Garry Loeppky, who went on to become RCMP deputy commissioner of operations. He has since retired.
Henschel remembered being excited to come to Prince George in 1981 as "a 19-year-old with a gun strapped to his hip."
"Today, you'd think how can a 19-year-old do that?" he said. "But there was a lot that you didn't know - it was a good thing that you didn't know what you didn't know when you started, because if you did, I think you'd be a lot more intimidated."
Not only does Henshcel believe new RCMP recruits receive better training today, he said the methods used by police officers have also evolved. When he was leaving Prince George in 1988, the concept of community policing was still in its infancy, but now it's a staple of the local detachment.
Henschel saw that first hand on Thursday night when he went for a ride along with some officers in Prince George. He noted the way they interacted with the people they met, including those at incidents they were called to deal with, was different from the way policing was done when he was on the beat in northern B.C.
After spending seven years in Prince George, Henschel moved on to a career that's included overseeing the security of the Prime Minister, the Governor General and other dignitaries to leading the force's forensic science and identification division. He's currently the deputy commissioner responsible for specialized police services.
He credited the down-to-earth nature of Prince George citizens for helping him learn the basics of the job.
"The combination of the kind of people who are here, the kind of community it is and also the opportunity to learn and build those foundational skills helped me and helped others along the way to have very successful careers," he said.
Despite Prince George's reputation within the RCMP as a fertile training ground, Henschel doesn't think the community deserves the characterization of dangerous as portrayed in the annual rankings my Maclean's magazine.
"I'm not quite sure how they arrived at that. I don't get the sense this is a dangerous place," he said.
