Supt. Warren Brown, the new commanding officer at the Prince George RCMP, said all the right things during his debut appearance before city council Monday to deliver the local detachment's annual report.
The two most important points he made had more to do with public relations than policing but they are significant nonetheless.
First, the downtown enforcement unit has been renamed the downtown safety unit. It will still be a three-person unit, it will still do bike patrols, it will find itself understaffed when officers are pulled away to help with major crimes.
The renaming, however, is Brown's way of managing the expectations of city council, downtown business owners and operators, as well as city residents, when it comes to policing downtown.
"I think it's a lot more palatable when people understand the true spirit of the police is not to arrest bad guys - that's a part of it - it's also to make sure people are safe," Brown said. "I'm hoping that perhaps a simple name change like that will get more co-operation, assistance, buy-in from the vulnerable, from social agencies and for people to see us as who we are - we're there to make a difference in people's lives."
Some people might not like the warm and fuzzy policing style when it comes to cracking down on unwanted activity in the city core but Brown makes a valid point. Ruthlessly enforcing the law downtown hasn't worked to make city streets safer in Prince George's downtown or any downtown anywhere. Successful improvement practices in problem downtown areas have revolved around policing being one part of a broader solution that engages the entire community, including many of the vulnerable individuals inhabiting downtown streets and alleys. In a nutshell, enforcement is a police matter but safety is everybody's concern.
The goal for any police officer and detachment is not to throw people in cells. That should only happen when all else has failed. The desirable goal is to make downtown streets - and the entire community - safe from the handful of individuals causing the majority of the problems. In other words, the focus must be on the needs of law-abiding residents to not only be safe but to feel safe. Taking care of that will simultaneously deal with that problem element in need of law enforcement.
Focusing on safety, rather than just enforcement, is also an important distinction to make for police officers. It's a reminder that safety is more than just the absence of crime and criminals. Four pedestrians were killed on Prince George streets last year, so safety is also about preventing terrible accidents for pedestrians and drivers. Finally, it's about making the job safe for police officers, too. Cops are no different from any other workers in that no one in policing should go to work wondering if today is the day they'll be killed on the job. That message is sometimes lost on the Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured on the job, which was held Tuesday.
Safety is also about health and that was the other important point in Supt. Brown's presentation to council. Gone are the days when police officers can simply pass off mental health issues onto the hospital, doctors, street nurses and community agencies. As Brown explained to council, mental health-related cases for the Prince George RCMP have jumped from 620 in 2008 to 1,037 in 2014.
For police officers on the street level, knowing the difference between the real criminals and the folks who forgot to take their meds is critical, possibly life-saving information. Being able to remove some or all of the tension from a situation is an essential part of policing, as is fully understanding the risk a person has to cause harm to themselves or others.
Last week, Brown told council, the local RCMP launched Car 60, a partnership with Northern Health that allows psychiatric nurses to provide assistance to officers taking mental health calls. It's these kinds of collaborative partnerships, focused on long-term solutions rather than just dealing with the immediate problems, that will make the downtown and the entire city safer.
