New training needed for police

Opinion

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This article was published 21/03/2024 (541 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Police Accountability Coalition (PAC) last week called out Winnipeg police for the way it’s dealing with mental health issues. This, after two people were killed recently by police while suffering mental health-related situations.

PAC suggests instead of using police to conduct wellness checks, community-led crisis teams should be utilized. A similar model is in place in Toronto. The premise is that the presence of a police officer — plainclothes or not — could exacerbate an already tense situation.

This suggests that police have only one role — as law enforcers. But a former Winnipeg police chief thinks this is too myopic and wants a national training program to set standards for the education of police recruits so police can become much more than just enforcers. They could become peacekeepers.

Dave Cassels, the police chief in Winnipeg from 1996 until 1999, is the president of the Coalition for Canadian Police Reform (CCPR), a group asking for the creation of a national college for all police recruits — not bricks and mortar — but a National Centre for Police Excellence which would inform and support training centres across the country.

A national accreditation would ensure training and standards that would fill any voids new hires have regarding diversity, racism and mental health issues. Students would learn methods to understand and better calm people and de-escalate situations. According to Cassels, these fundamentals do not appear to be taught in a sustained way in any police college in Canada.

Training centres across Canada could be utilized and the quality of the instruction and the trainers advanced skills in adult education accredited. National exams would assess students’ knowledge of history, theory and practical knowledge with an emphasis on the local community’s diversity. The outcome would be better trained recruits who could work anywhere in Canada.

John Lilley, one of the founding members of the CCPR, says there’s a great deal of emphasis in the police service on beat officers getting promoted into key jobs like the canine unit or tactical support. This means that there’s too much focus on a physical response rather than relying on softer skills like communication and de-escalation.

The national standards would emphasize those skills, building a new mindset within the police force itself and potentially changing the culture.

There’s been a lot of criticism about policing in this city in recent years. Concerns about the number of police-related shootings involving Black and Indigenous people raising issues of racism have been a regular refrain. Many are asking for a rethink of the funding model for policing — with a diversion of funding from the police to community, recreation, health and education programs instead. Less police, more social work.

But what if the police officer being trained on the job understood that the job itself should be less police work and more social work? Is “duty of care” not the principle function of our police officers?

If you look at the recruitment page for the Winnipeg Police Service, there’s no requirement for anything other than a high school diploma, although there is a suggestion that a post-secondary degree would be given preference. What that degree is in, however, is not stated. Obviously, students enrolled in criminology, criminal justice or sociology are more likely to apply.

Yet, there’s no guarantee that what they’ve been provided at a university or college setting has provided them with the information they’ve needed to do the heavy lifting a job like the Winnipeg police requires.

Upon their hire, new trainees go through an additional 18 weeks of in-class training by Winnipeg police and another 16 weeks in the field and return for two more weeks in the class before graduating.

But according to Lilley, the curriculum he has studied of police colleges across the country provide little by way of understanding how to deal with those in mental health crisis and even less in understanding the role police play in democracy.

And while there has been an emphasis on improving the number of Indigenous and Black recruits to ensure a diverse police force, the historical implications of trauma and colonization are not referenced.

The status quo in Winnipeg is killing marginalized people in this city.

It’s time to rethink how we’re training our police officers to stop thinking only about law enforcement and start thinking peace keeping, especially in times of mental health crisis. A National Centre of Police Excellence is a good place to start.

Shannon Sampert is a lecturer at RRC Polytech and an instructor at the University of Manitoba. She was the politics and perspectives editor at the Free Press from 2014-17.

shannon@mediadiva.ca