The hallway is his beat

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This article was published 24/01/2011 (5372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Those two guys over there are buddies of a student who got stabbed over the weekend. Maybe they’ll drop by for a quiet word later, Const. Scott Wiley says as he leans nonchalantly against the wall in St. John’s High School.

Wiley has also been told that somebody who heard from somebody about who might have been involved in some criminal acts over the weekend may seek him out.

Meanwhile, he’s still trying to recover another kid’s MP3 player from a fellow student who stole it.

For four years now, Wiley has been spending most of his day at the North End high school as one of eight Winnipeg police officers stationed in city high schools as school resource officers.

This is a Monday, and each Monday starts with a chat with vice-principal Dennis Mogg to see what weekend trouble might show up in the school.

Mogg reads the weekend papers to see what’s been happening throughout the catchment area to check which students might live near a crime scene, or even be involved or affected by a relative’s involvement.

“It allows us to do some pre-emptive stuff,” Mogg said. “If a kid comes in without the conditions for learning, we have a problem. One of my philosophies is you can’t walk down my halls scared.”

Said Wiley: “If a kid has been arrested on the weekend, I’ll meet with him to let him know I know.”

The constable explained that part of his mandate is to keep minor matters away from the justice system if he can, so he gives kids a couple of warnings if they’re not in serious trouble with the law. “I consider it a failure if I have to arrest a kid,” he said.

He said problems tend to happen after the end of the day. Now he does a three-block sweep around the school in late afternoon, looking for non-students who might be out for trouble with the St. John’s kids. He’s even been known to give his siren a quick screech to alert anyone with an inappropriate agenda that he’s on the beat.

“We have a safe-departure system” in which teachers with radios are out on the streets, Mogg said. If Mogg hears of a kid who might be facing hassles after school, he’ll keep the student in his office until the coast is clear, or maybe give the student a bus ticket.

“The strength of the North End program is to build relationships with the kids,” Wiley said. “It works because the kids talk to us.”

His office is in the guidance department. It’s a well-travelled area, so no one knows who’s coming in for a university calendar and who’s coming to see Wiley.

Lots of kids drop by just to chill or to say hello. One Grade 11 student popped in over lunchtime to volunteer to help out Wiley’s after-school cadet programs in the neighbourhood’s feeder elementary schools.

As a resource officer, “you bring your own strengths to the job. I bring hockey and the military,” said Wiley, who got swamped with donations of hockey equipment after my colleague, Gord Sinclair Jr., wrote about Wiley’s fledgling and popular hockey program at St. John’s.

The lunch hour is a key time for Wiley.

He slowly strolls the overflowing hallways. The ebullient kids are flowing like a river. He’s exchanging banter with dozens of students. It’s exuberant and noisy, familiar and easygoing, and the kids are comfortable with the uniform.

When he just hangs out, holding up a piece of the wall, he’s in a main junction where he can see down the two busiest hallways.

He’s Wiley to the kids, not Const. Wiley, or constable, or Scott; just Wiley. It took a little while at first to learn this showed the kids liked him, he recalled.

He talked to one girl this particular Monday about her stolen MP3 player. She knows who has it, but the other student wants $20 to give it back.

“That’s extortion,” Wiley said.

He updates Mogg, who agreed: “That’s extortion.” Mogg is having trouble getting the other girl and her mother to keep appointments to discuss the situation.

Mogg and Wiley know each other’s jurisdiction. The constable doesn’t hassle anyone who’s late for class or who’s violating the no-hat, no-cell or no-texting policies — he stays off Mogg’s turf.

Grade 12 student Dustin Merasty dropped into Wiley’s office. He’s one of Wiley’s hockey players, an 18-year-old young adult who’s raising a younger sibling and hopes to be an RCMP officer or firefighter.

“(Wiley is) easy to talk to. It keeps people in order,” Merasty said. “Last year or so, there haven’t been any fights in the school. The school has changed, respectful-wise,” Merasty said.

“He’s straight up.”

Merasty remembered Wiley giving some guys a couple of warnings, stern and clear: “They’ve been clean since.”

At last year’s winter dance, Merasty said, there was talk that a guy was coming to the school to cause problems. Word got to Wiley, who got to the guy first.

“His ears are always open,” Merasty said.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Elementary,

constable

‘These kids have obviously been listening,” Const. Scott Wiley said with a smile as three precocious kids at Inkster School tell a visitor about the perils of the Internet and drug use.

“He teaches us what they do to you and how they can ruin your life,” said Grade 6 student Giuseppe Cisternino.

Like classmates Faith Gallaugher and Brenden Heide, Giuseppe is happy to see Wiley drop by the school every week or so.

“The fun part of my job is my recess visits. It’s where I build my best relationships,” Wiley said.

“When he’s outside, most of the kids are walking with him instead of playing,” said Giuseppe.

School resource officers spend most of their time in high schools, but also visit the neighbourhood elementary schools, sometimes talking in classrooms, most of the time just walking the hall and doing recess with the kids. Wiley’s territory includes Machray, Luxton, Ralph Brown and Champlain schools.

Inkster principal Sandra Intrater said the kids learn to treat the police as friends who are there to help them. Intrater can call Wiley at any time if the school has a problem. Now, the constable is looking into a night-deposit bag that’s gone astray somehow, and he’s staying on top of an investigation into an adult who should not have been on the grounds after school.

“I have kids share things with me on the playground that they wouldn’t share with me in the classroom,” he said.

Over the years, he’s been told a daughter was taking the fall in a murder to protect a mother, and a young guy suddenly has a lot of money because he’s dealing drugs.