Police board still trying to find its place

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This article was published 18/11/2017 (2891 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

David Asper wants to talk with you.

So he was saying the other day while talking with me.

Reaching out and engaging the citizens of Winnipeg is his top priority in his new high-profile position as chairman of the Winnipeg Police Board, which is supposed to act on behalf of the public as the civilian oversight and governance body of the service.

Actually, Asper and his six board colleagues want to listen more than talk, because they’re mandated by provincial legislation to interpret your needs and expectations of police to help structure the service’s strategic plan and present the police budget to city council.

The problem — or at least one the board continues to struggle with — is attracting public delegations to voice their opinions at a 9:30 a.m. weekday session at city hall. Even getting interested citizens to attend an evening event at a neighbourhood school hasn’t been easy.

But then, nothing seems to have come easy for the board since it was created in June 2013.

The largely volunteer body, which has changed members over the years, appears to have a fundamental problem: finding a way to do its basic job by figuring out a basic role.

It’s a problem that was symbolized on Asper’s Facebook page late last month.

He was six months into his role as chairman when he posted a photo of himself all smiles, wearing a police museum buffalo coat and offering a “hearty salute” to the service. The image of the police board chairman dressed as Retro Cop — as Asper would tell me — was just a moment of “levity” during an orientation tour that took him and other new board members to the police museum.

It certainly looked like a hoot.

But, on a more serious level, it could raise the public perception that Asper, a renowned Blue Bombers super fan, has started to view the Thin Blue Line the same way he sees the Big Blue — as a fan. It could seem his police ride-alongs through street gang turf, for instance, or his one-on-one relationship with police Chief Danny Smyth, could blur the lines between police board member and police team member.

“Yeah,” Asper said when I raised the perception question. “That’s a fair concern.”

But he said the board doesn’t see itself that way, and he said he thinks independently.

“We see our job as to ask good questions and to be a challenge function to the service. A lot. Most of the time.”

But his Facebook post literally saluting the police also contained these words meant for the rank-and-file, as I read it: “We’re proud to serve as your board.”

So, is it the community’s board or the police service’s board?

“Ah, that’s a good question,” Asper said. “In theory, it’s the public’s board.”

That prompted Asper to return the conversation to the board’s legislatively prescribed role with the police service, expressing the same sentiment as the board’s previous chairman, city councillor Scott Gillingham.

“So we don’t see ourselves as their — I mean, we govern them,” Asper said of the police service. “We govern the conduct of the chief. And through him, the service. That’s what we do, a civilian lay voice in the ear of the service and the politicians. And to be a conduit with the public. And the board has struggled with that communication role.”

“With whom?” I asked.

“Well, with everybody. And particularly the public. The public doesn’t know what we do.”

But by the sounds of it, I suggested, more than four years on the board itself is still trying to determine what it does.

“Yeah,” Asper said.

He didn’t say this, but judging by what I gathered later from informed others, in large part that struggle results from the board trying to work with a city administration and a police service that never wanted a public oversight body getting in their way of doing business as usual.

And, at least as far as city hall is concerned, it still isn’t letting the board get in the way.

The city will present its new civic budget Wednesday, one that dictates no department can be granted an increase of more than 1.2 per cent. But that city cost-of-living threshold doesn’t match the cost of the police service’s business; not when more than 80 per cent of its costs are in salaries that are rising higher than 1.2 per cent. So, while the police board has performed its duty of relaying to the mayor and his budget committee a police budget that, as I hear it, has a proposed 1.6 per cent hike for next year, it’s city council that has the last word.

That’s the frustrating reality for the board.

“There’s no way that anybody but elected officials should be dealing with the police budget,” Asper said. “They’re accountable. We’re not.”

At another point in our conversation about the board’s function, Asper said: “You have to ask yourself what have you added. And that’s the question we have to keep asking ourselves. What do we add?”

Asper said he doesn’t have an answer yet.

“Because we’re still learning how to walk.”

But it’s a basic answer the board will need to determine by next year, when a provincially mandated five-year review of the police board is due. That, and another even more fundamental question that Asper is asking himself.

“Why do we have a police board in the first place?”

Sounds like we really need that talk Asper said he’s so eager to have with the public.

And soon.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca