Its Time to Move On…

Posted on by Pete Cross

I will admit to a little trepidation in composing this blog and sending the message it contains. The reason I am nervous is that I have decided that this will be my last blog under the banner of BehindtheYellowtape.ca.— that in other words, I will be closing down the web site.

This is a place which has been my writing home since 2017 and I will miss it. When I began this blog experiment I had serious doubts and questioned if I could transition from the world of policing and investigations and wander over to the left side of the brain. Could I entertain my creative side and explore the art of writing while at the same time speak to the policing issues of the day. In some ways, this site was both my therapy and my adventure. I felt the need to try and figure it out, so I took the leap.

It turns out it seemed to work out and now as I look back over these years I have written a blog roughly every two weeks; 168 blogs, totalling about 252,000 words (the equivalent of about two books). To be sure it was at times work and required a dedication and a daily time allotment. The “work” of writing was in itself mostly enjoyable and I even liked the required research that went along with it. So, I am not leaving and shutting down because of the work and the time commitment.

There are two basic reasons I am going to leave this platform; I would like the time to explore other writing possibilities and secondly I do believe that everything has a shelf life and I no longer feel that my writings have the same relevance to the topic as when it began.

This realization came gradually, as I traveled along the continuum of the work/life curve. With the passage of time, it became easier to see my growing distance away from the day to day of the police officer. Facts are facts. I have now been out of policing since November 2011 and now find myself firmly embedded in the “older” generation. The reality is that I now stand before you as a greying balding symbol of “old school” policing. The technology and the cultural changes as they advance are molding a different type of police officer; a police officer who is facing new and different challenges. The job hasn’t changed, just the way it is done. It is a proud profession and when you leave it and the retirement clock starts– at some point you need to come to the realization that your experience is not current enough to be relevant to the readers.

Of course, I could have continued to write and stick with some of the broader legal and investigative issues. However, I have already covered most of those broader issues, sometimes two and three times and at some point it tends to get repetitive. During this time I have for the most part steered clear of writing about issues such as pensions, dental plans, or veterans affairs claims, because if I am honest, those issues don’t keep my interest for very long. I have also refused to write about individual bitches and complaints forwarded to me by other officers, even though they may be of some interest. For the main reason that it is often difficult to sort out the objective truth from the subjective viewpoint in these often complicated and nuanced cases.

At the end of the day this blog has been read a couple of hundred thousand times and has even reached some readers in the far off portions of the world. Through the blog I have been able to re-connect with many distant friends some of whom I had not spoken with for decades and that has been one of the best outcomes of this whole endeavour.

There have been many that have commented on the blog and who have written to it. I have enjoyed it all. There are a core of dedicated readers and commentators who I have also enjoyed when they share their thoughts. You know who you are and I wish to thank all of you for paying attention and taking the time to read, whether you agreed or disagreed. In all those blogs and in all those years, believe it or not, there has been only four or five negative comments, which both encouraged me and made me feel that there was a silent majority for whom I was possibly giving a voice.

To be clear I am not going to stop writing. I will continue and hopefully some of it will surface on different platforms. I am also hoping that the quality of writing will continue to improve as I am very much still learning. It is indeed an art form that has a steep learning curve. I will also let you in on a bit of a secret. During the past two and a half years I have been writing a non-fiction book, which is now complete and in the process of being shlepped to a few literary agents. The hope is that it will provide an entry to the mainstream publishing world and on to someone’s bookshelf. The book is tentatively called “Ponytail” and it is the life story of Rapinder @Rob Sidhu, a member of the RCMP in Surrey and Vancouver, an officer who became infamous in his time–who ended up being a prolific drug trafficker, got caught by the Americans and served eight years in the American prison system. It was the early 2000’s when he became a real thorn in the side of the policing community of the time. For the book, I conducted over 200 hours of interviews with Rob, who has also personally contributed some of his writings for the book. It is a dark story, but one that needs to be told and will likely be of interest and be a lesson to many cops. Rob had reached out to me to write his story because he followed the blog.

I have also been working with a documentary film crew, examining the Jodi Hendrickson case, a 17 year old girl who went missing and presumed murdered in 2009. It was technically my last “murder case”. It has in turn exposed me to the world of film and film production and spurred an interest in screen-writing.

In other words, I will be o.k. and plan to stay busy.

Writing is a lonely endeavour and was often my solace in the difficult times, a place to escape, but also a place to go when feeling uplifted. I recommend the writing process to anyone, those hidden Hemingways that are out there, and maybe there is a younger version of a blog to come to speak to the issues of the day. In terms of the writing, I leave you with one last quote, this from writer Daphne Rose Kingman, “Holding on is believing there is only a past; letting go is knowing there is a future. “

Whether you are an active officer, a new recruit, or an old vet, my wish is the same, that you enjoy the best of what life has to offer in the years to come, and that you embrace all the various stages of life that are coming your way. Again, my deepest thanks.

Have a good shift.

Pete

The Gastronomic leanings of Police Officers

Posted on by Pete Cross

Philosopher Anthelme Brillat-Savarin is credited in 1826 of declaring, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are”. This has morphed slightly in these modern times to “you are what you eat”, a phrase now bandied about by every dietary consultant, gym enthusiast, protein pusher, and cross-training instructor, who are continually bombarding us with their pithy aphorisms on how to feel better and thus be a better person. If we are indeed a reflection of what we eat, or have eaten in the past, this may be a bit of a scary realization– especially for those of us in the earlier policing days, who have wolfed down the gas station hotdog, or enjoyed mountains of carbs in various forms, all doled out in the late night establishments catering to the midnight shift.

This blog is probably not for those of you who are religious in your meal consumption, you who weigh out your proteins, or create your morning shakes with your Nutribullet Pro 900. There are many police officers, old and young, who now take to social media, be it Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook or Instagram, taking selfie poses to show off their personally cultivated abs and extraordinarily firm buttocks. Quite honestly, I don’t understand it. However, this is not yet the norm for all police officers, although this “healthy” at all costs is a growing movement in the world of the blue uniforms. The National Health Institute however, still estimates that 50% of police officers have a body mass index described as being in the “overweight range”.

Before going any further I must confess to being one of those people who now display the old age paunch and could definitely afford to lose 20 lbs. I would be much better off if I conformed to the retirement norm of 10,000 steps and replaced the peanut butter cookie with the keto nutri-bar. However that is not likely to happen–also I am a nicer person when I eat the cookie.

Throughout policing I was always conscious of my future health and the need to stay fit for the job. I was a constant gym user for all of those policing years. But, it was more maintenance than improvement as I worked shift work and was on call for many of those plus 30 years. This resulted in the consumption of mounds of pasta at late night eateries, most of which were unlikely to win any Michelin stars. According to National Health we were in those days, continuing to put ourselves in the position of “increased risk of weight gain and developing diabetes and cardiovascular” problems. In an academic explanation we were eating more “disparate meals” and we were suffering from a “displacement of the fasting/feeding cycle”. But, we didn’t spend much time worrying about it in those years and what I remember is a lot of good times, sitting with co-workers over a heart warming plate of food; admittedly, followed by many periods of indigestion and reaching for the Tums or the Pepto- Bismol.

What police officers eat is normally a result of two primary factors, availability and time of day. Those people working in remote or rural areas on a night shift are in desperate straights, often faced with a late night snack or meal from a 7-11, Circle K, a 24 hour Chevron station, or the ubiquitous Tim Hortons. (Tim Hortons by the way has an in house coffee shop located inside the classified walls of Surrey RCMP HQ- clearly a monument to bad coffee and unhealthy eating –and maybe an ode to old school policing.) Nutrition and calorie wise meals are almost non-existent in a lot of policing areas and would often be substituted by buckets of coffee and a honey crueller. In my early years, it was even more dire, as we were smokers, and there was many a long shift, where a Players Light would sustain us for 12 hours. I managed to kick the smoking habit, but not the coffee habit.

The new age police officer is much more in tune with their health. Even if they eat in an unhealthy way, they at least know they are eating poorly. They often now “prepare” their meals, lunch bags filled with nutritious small clear plastic containers with almonds, kale salads, a chicken breast and maybe a pudding cup. Don’t get me wrong, they are in all likelihood in better shape and less prone to illness– although the RCMP has unlimited sick leave and this remains a continuous problem, despite this new health awareness, there are a lot of officers calling in sick, especially on Friday and Saturday nights.

This is all to say that we seem to have lost something in our transition to the soy milk latte from the dark roast Tim’s. Is it possible that transitioning from the Salisbury steak drowning in gravy, to the pesto covered chicken breast with a salad (dressing on the side), may be altering how police are perceived and how they go about their business? Just consider the side effect of removing officers from sitting with the locals on the night shift in the local establishment. I have fond memories of Tim Hortons at 96th and King George Highway in Surrey and eating and kibitzing with the local street walkers, the ambulance attendants and the odd runaway from Surrey General Hospital. Many police officers instead are now found munching away in their vehicles, eyes fixed on their computers and cellphones for entertainment when enjoying their 10-62 (even this has apparently changed to Code 10-98).

Don’t get me wrong. I am not an advocate for obesity as a policing goal, but times are different now and I think I liked it better then. The eating habits of those bygone days seem to reflect a different attitude to the job, a type of personality more suited to the job of serving the public and being one of the members of a community. The eateries were meeting places where you became acquainted with the waiters and the cooks, where they often placed a pot of coffee in the middle of the table, and tried to entice you with the daily special. The diners and late night spots were in some ways the community policing stations of their day.

I was recently standing behind four young Vancouver City Police officers in line at the local Starbucks. All four, two women and two men looked sharp in their uniform, they were slim and looked to be in good physical shape. As they stood politely in line, people came up to them, asked them questions or made the usual “What no donuts?” remark. It made me hopeful. A few days later I was in my local Vietnamese pho shop when an older Vancouver City cop came in, and picked up an order, calling the shop owner of this cubby hole family restaurant by his first name. They shared a laugh and a nod of appreciation for the food and for the business. That also made me feel good. Although those deep fried delicious spring rolls probably were not as healthy (he should have gone for the salad rolls). It was clearly not this officers first time at the deep fried dance, as he did display more of that well-fed girth.

I liked both these groups of officers although I did not know them, but if I called the police for some form of assistance, I think I would prefer the latter, “spring roll cop”, to come to my apartment. I can’t say specifically why, maybe I just relate more to the older version. This, even though I know the first group would likely be more efficient with their words and their procedures. So was it their epicurean choices that would lead me to lean one way more than the other?

This may all be just a silly perplexing debate, of minimal importance in the overall measure of policing challenges and one for which there is no resolution, it is just merely an observation.

Maybe I am just hungry.

Photo courtesy of Andrea Clayton Vail via Flickr — Some Rights Reserved

Productivity in Policing?

Posted on by Pete Cross

This blog’s question is whether or not one can measure productivity in policing? It is a question that has been sporadically posed over the years, toyed with, but never really answered or explored in serious fashion. Why is that? Most police departments both in Canada and the U.S. are not measuring performance accurately. In a U.S. the National Institute of Justice study which examined 20,000 plus police departments they found that very “few are measuring performance adequately”. In Canada, most of all the measurement tools employed by the variety of police services relies on the statistically broad generalized numbers and percentages; crime reduction clearance rates, response times, number of violent crimes, and enforcement productivity– such as arrests made or tickets issued. Is this the best way to measure productivity or is it even a measurement that carries any meaning in terms of productivity?

At best these are flawed measuring tools which are largely misinterpreted or skewed in their findings. For instance, is a downturn in serious crime a measure of community concerns, when those community concerns usually revolve around other problems and other types of behaviour? Should we be focused on reported crimes when unreported crimes may be the better measurement tool? In terms of the latter, statistically, it is currently estimated that in general terms, unreported crime is three times the amount of reported crime.

Albert Einstein had a phrase, “everything that counts can’t be counted, and everything that can be counted doesn’t count”. Police use a lot of surveys and polls and they talk constantly about overall crime rates, especially when the numbers portray them in a favourable light. However, I am referring here to a stricter economic definition, which is “output per unit of input”. In 2024 as policing costs soar, as transitions and cost comparisons are being trotted out in public discussions about the RCMP moving to a city Surrey Police Service, has it not come time to start looking at the issue of productivity in a more incisive and informative way? In labour terms, productivity is what drives salaries, and traditionally that comes about as a result of technological advancements, which in turn improve productivity, and thus drive higher wages. In economic theory, “workers are paid on the value of the work they produce, industries with higher productivity will tend to have higher wages”. Wages are the representative of the amount of value created in production. Do these theories apply to the economic models of policing? Is it possible to argue that the latest atmospheric increase in police wages have been the result of increased productivity?

Maybe the broad constructs of economic labour theory do not have a direct or easy application to policing models, but when there are no meaningful evaluations of police productivity there can be no meaningful evaluations for the public in terms of cost/benefit, there can be no accountability to local governments, or adequate control for police managers. When no examination is undertaken it is as the National Institute says a problem of the “the most fundamental and serious nature”.

In terms of the lack of productivity studies, police organizations often defend themselves by stating that the broad mandate and public demand for police services means that there is no single measure of productivity in everything that the police are tasked to do. That would seem to be at least partially true. How does one measure productivity of a community policing officer, or a traffic analyst, a uniform officer on the street, or a homicide investigator? How does one compare or measure output of a Federal drug section or Intel section with a uniform officer. They perform almost completely different functions, have different outputs, even though possibly similar goals. However, it seems logical that one should be able to measure the single units separately in terms of their productivity and with some degree of accuracy.

There are two broad types of measuring tools; one that measures outcomes and one that measures process. Last night I watched from my downtown apartment the arrest of an individual on the street by the Vancouver police department. The outcome was easily measured, the individual was handcuffed and was after a fairly lengthy period of time transported to jail. The process was four police cars (including the paddy wagon) and a total of six officers involved to make the single arrest. Having been part of this “process” many times over the years past I could not think of many instances where a single arrest of an unarmed male required this level of police attendance. Has productivity increased or decreased? One would certainly not see this level of police attendance and resources at a small rural police department or RCMP detachment. While stationed in Bella Coola, only one of us would be working at any one time. Can we assume from this observation that police officers are more productive in rural less inhabited locations than in Vancouver?

In another example, many times, especially in my early years I attended serious and fatal accidents as a uniform officer in a semi-rural area of New Brunswick. I was always the one holding the dummy end of the measuring tape and taking crude triangulation notes for the two of us in attendance. Nowadays, most serious traffic accidents seem to involve at a minimum of three or four police cars, a traffic analyst, traffic control people and their vehicles, and maybe someone to fly the drone over the accident. These new measurements also now take endless hours of road closures. In talking to a traffic analyst he estimated that a fatal accident now takes a minimum of 40 hours for him/her just to process the information that has been gathered. In this accident investigation comparison, the output increased in terms of details and displays or reenactments of those measurements, but has productivity increased or decreased in terms of the individual officer? Then the final question is has the overall outcome changed?

In the world I spent a great of time in, we used to attend homicide scenes with two individuals and then you would work with forensics and the uniform officers that were in attendance. Now, homicides are attended (at least in IHIT) by a minimum of eight officers, and you still work with forensics and the local uniform contingent. If you were lucky and had prosecutable charges, the Report to Crown Counsel with a variety of attachments may have been a couple of hundred pages along with boxes of transcribed statements and enumerated exhibits, as you went to trial. Now, with the advent of technologies and digitization, especially in the audible and visual recording of events, I am told that the average homicide consists of about 5,000 pages. Again, the output or volume of materials presented has clearly increased, but at least statistically the outcome is about the same. So has productivity increased or decreased?

None of this theorizing or productivity rests solely in the policing world. It would be extremely difficult to argue that the Court system and the lawyers involved have become more productive in the last number of years. It takes a great deal longer to get into court and the trials seem endless. Even the Supreme Court of Canada in the Jordan decision said it is all taking much too long. Of course, this is also the same court that gave us Stinchcombe and the ridiculous levels of disclosure now required under the law– which in turn has made the court process the equivalent of a marathon and not a sprint. How could one possibly argue that the growth of the Federal government ranks is the result of increased productivity?

Has crime become more complicated? It is something I always hear and this is a cogent argument when it is crime that involves the complications of the internet, whether it be fraud, bullying or sexual harassment. In those cases, the process has become more complicated and the outcomes also seem to be diminishing. In the standard criminal code, statutory offence or traffic offence, the crime definition has not changed, the eventual outcome has not changed, what has changed is the processing.

If you go to the politically popular single measurement of “bang for your buck”, it would clearly be ridiculous to argue that two trained police officers, making double overtime, should be standing directing traffic at a parade barricade. Is there a better more economical way to perform this task? Is this a productive use of highly paid resources? If not, then the bigger question is why is it still being done?

This is all to say, the tools of economics should and could be used in policing. Resources need to be put to the studying of the day to day performance in policing. There is nothing to be feared if one is arguing for greater productivity and use of those resources. Now, the police use broad sometimes irrelevant outcomes as a measurement of their overall worth and effectiveness. The actual process and levels of productivity are not being watched, and if policing is like the rest of the country, productivity is trending lower. Until we do and in a transparent fashion, there are going to be more and more questions by the taxpayers as to whether one can justify police budgets and the hiring of police officers going into the future.

Photo courtesy of Arty-Arnaud from Pixabay – Some Rights Reserved

Just get out of the way!

Posted on by Pete Cross

One of the early founders of modern management theory, in the 20th century, was Peter Drucker. A widely popular and respected academic who coined such terms as the “knowledge worker”, and explored in his books and articles, how humans are organized, across business, government and non-profit entities. He was the leading edge of the massive growth of whole schools of business managers and professed experts in the world of management.

There are of course drawbacks to what has become an obsessive need to create the “perfect” manager. But Drucker forseaw also saw a bit of the future when he wrote about misguided or “over controlling managers.” In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal another author points to the fact that, “workers are most often productive when their managers leave them alone”. It was entitled: “Bosses, get out of your Employees Way”. Both the Wall Street Journal and Drucker wrote about the characteristics of managers who are not working well; too much meddling, too many meetings, and “butt covering” reports.

In the world of politics, there are countless examples of how things go wrong when the politicos and the senior bureaucrats get together, often leading to massive and costly dysfunction. It is almost always the taxpayer and those workers that are at the lower echelon who bear the brunt of their decision making.

One should look no further than the recent ongoing saga of the Surrey Police Service and the Mounties; and in particular the influence of Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke.

In the Brenda Locke/NDP fiasco in Surrey, Mayor Locke fought what seemed to be an obvious policing outcome for 18 months and wreaked havoc on any possibility of a smooth and cost effective transition. She was the ultimate hypocrite, having voted in favour originally of a municipal force, but then deciding for pure political reasons, that she was going to fight it at every step of the way. She clearly demonstrated time after time, that she had no real grasp of the logistics and the day to day running of police operations.

Most Mounties, if being honest with themselves know that the RCMP have simply lost their way, maybe temporarily, but currently they are struggling on every level. They can no longer fulfill their mandate nor their Provincial contracts with any degree of certainty. They also know that the writing is on the wall, in that the Ottawa mandarins themselves want to go to a Federal police force; they no longer want the headache brought on by Provincial contracts. It will take years but that is clearly the direction they are going. They want to be the Canadian Bureau of Investigation.

Despite all of this, Brenda Locke was supported by the upper echelon of the Surrey RCMP Detachment and the managers of the National Police Federation union in her personal fight. The senior executives in that Detachment played silly bugger, in the faint hope that their puppet Locke would do their bidding. The Executives did not want to be pushed out of their biggest detachment and the union did not want to lose a significant number of their members. They fabricated their capabilities and they obfuscated the costing formulas in an effort to convince Locke that they and the Ottawa RCMP establishment behind them were the answer to Surrey’s policing issues. Somehow, they also convinced Locke that the Police Act did not trump her authority as mayor. In the end she had to do the dance of the damned. Millions of taxpayer dollars later, the Mounties are now getting ready to leave en masse, and the inevitable transition can begin. They have become the poster child for incompetence in police management.

However, there is a clearer example of when senior managers need to get out of the way and in this example the RCMP authored it themselves. It is the recent report on the James Smith Cree Nation killings in September 2022. It is what came of their internal review of those tragic killings. Interestingly, contrary to their normal practise they decided to release it to the public. (There is no need to comment at this time on the credibility of a report where the Mounties are judging their own actions). In their summations, true to form, nothing was done improperly, but in clear nouveau government speak said that “certain areas of growth were identified”. They said there were times where it was “unclear who was in charge”, and that it became confusing at times between their “three lead commanders”. That there aircrews were sometimes “flying with little purpose”. Let’s also put aside the oxymoron of “three lead commanders” and the fact that apparently the police were flying around with no goal in mind.

The response to the killings was for the most part handled properly. I believe the members on the ground did the job, like they did in Portapique . Although it may have been mayhem at the time, the job did get done, but with a large human cost.

The senior executives of the RCMP however, seem to never learn the basic lesson that should be taken from an Nova Scotia inquiry and the report now written in Saskatchewan. That lesson is that Senior managers in policing when it comes to urgent, time-sensitive and drawn out operational circumstances need to get out of the way. I have written many times, that in these types of situations especially, one needs to flatten the organizational pyramid and get rid of these gatherings of senior executives in these “Command Centres”. Transfer the decision making to the folks on the ground. I should also point out that my thoughts on this would not be popular in the current management teachings now being constantly extolled.

There are a couple of reasons I believe this to be the case, and it may go some way in also explaining the obstinance of the senior managers to accept any change.

First, in a para-military structure, which all police departments are, decision making is predicated on the thought that the higher the rank, the greater wisdom and experience and with it comes power. Under the current system of promotion and advancement in the RCMP and all police agencies, it can be easily argued that this is now not always the case. For the last couple of decades the process of advancement has been deeply flawed. The best and the brightest are not necessarily rising to the top and experience on the job is not the highest priority. It has been replaced by executives now given more credit for the ability to speak the lingo of government, the speech of political correctness, inclusion and diversity. They spend multiple years getting to that top, constantly trained in the appropriate messaging, spending more time in boardrooms, with white boards and group-think, mission statements and community policing modelling. In many ways they have to be political, we insist on it, and we have allowed many police agencies to become organizations only reflecting their government pay masters.

Secondly, the route up the ladder in policing means you leave the front lines, you become administrators, you are involved in policies and guidelines. You are removed from the day to day issues and the speed of operations, sometimes these individuals are many years removed. It attracts a certain type of personality to these roles, it certainly doesn’t attract those that joined policing to be “operational”or work on the front lines. The organizations are now structured in such a way, that if you want to stay “operational”, you simply can not go up the ladder.

In exercising their senior manager power, they now seem to have only one solution. Their solution, seemingly like all government departments, is always the call for more resources, greater supervision and a larger bureaucratic machine. The policing world itself has undergone a massive transformation in the last 30 years; the operational pyramid has been completely turned upside down. What used to take one person, now takes three, four, or five.

It should therefore come as no surprise, that in the Saskatchewan report they have decided that in the future, in their Division Emergency Operations Centre based in Regina, that they will now add a Flight Co-ordinator, a criminal analyst, and a major crime investigator to their list of senior executives. More bodies, more needed lines of extra communication.

When you have unusual or atypical criminal circumstances, like a Portapique or James Smith Cree Nation situations, paradoxically–the police put in charge decision makers who usually have been removed from operational policing, have only a cursory knowledge of the geographic area, the police personnel involved, and the makeup of the people and resources in that community. They now come from a world where split second decision making is not of the essence. They have to be briefed, establish more communication lines, and then set up their “command structure”. It is time consuming, confusing and it is needless.

So my advice in the end remains the same. Give the people on the ground the resources that are needed. That should be your only role. Harder yet, relinquish the power, but most importantly— get the hell out of the way.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons by aaron_anderer -some rights Reserved

Productivity

Posted on by Pete Cross

One of the recent headlines in Canada originated from a speech given, in fact it was termed a “blunt” speech, by the Sr. Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada Carolyn Rogers. The speech centred around the drop of productivity in Canada in relation to other countries, in particular the U.S. and the G7. She described the weak labour productivity in Canada and said that in fact it had reached levels that should be considered an “emergency”.

Productivity in the economy is defined traditionally and measured in economic output per hour worked. In 1984 our Canadian levels were at 88% of that of the Americans, but in 2022 we are at 71% versus the Americans and we are lower than the G7 countries with the single exception of Italy. Again, the speech was one dealing with purely economic theory– productivity down, labour costs up, prices up, and the continued growth of inflation. However, this led to the question of whether or not productivity can be measured in policing or in the wider legal system.

Can labour and its level of efficiency be measured in policing, or at least to some degree? There is labour, there is time and there is an output, even though it is not an economic output? Can it be as simple as a calculation such as number of officers up, crime up, therefore police productivity down? Public Safety Canada does not even use the term productivity. So it can probably be assumed that currently there is no measure of “productivity” in terms of individual officers, or as officers in terms of a particular unit. Public Safety Canada and other police agencies, instead use the term “performance”.

There are two major differences in productivity versus performance . Performance is both qualitative and quantitative while productivity measures the impact or output of the work done and the labour resources employed.

The Federal government indicates that there are both direct and indirect measures of “performance” in relation to policing. They say direct measures are such things as crime rates, number of arrests, fines issued, clearance rates, and calls for service response times. They say “indirect” measures include, surveys, observations of social behaviour, situational studies and independent testing. I am going to ignore the latter measurement tools, the indirect tools, because it would seem to be a much more subjective set of tools and would be a lengthy topic all on its own.

In terms of direct measurement tools, there are some units in policing which are easily measured such as calls into a dispatch centre. For instance, they measure time response in answering emergency 911 calls. In the last stats reported by E-Comm , it was on average 5 seconds or less. This despite there having been an 11% increase in calls for service. A good result, with a positive spin. On the other hand they do not measure how long a non-emergency call takes; such as reporting a break and enter, or how long that person may wait on hold under those circumstances. Nor do they give statistics on how long before an officer even attends a break and enter, in fact in the cities, they may not even attend– often telling the victim to send in the details. This is just to say, measurement tools can be flawed, in-complete or mis-leading and can often be tailored depending on your viewpoint. But the fact that there are some measurements in place in terms of performance is re-assuring.

In a different example, in September 2023 report done for Police Services concerning the CFSEU (Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit) was obtained by a freedom of information request by the Vancouver Sun newspaper. In that report the agency came under heavy criticism. In the 123 page report it was stated that the agency “is neither effective in suppressing gang violence and organized crime nor is it providing the Province with an adequate return on investment”. A damning statement but what seemed more interesting is that they clearly undertook what must have made some cost/benefit analysis of the work being done by CFSEU– and clearly found it wanting. The report had been undertaken after a spate of murders, such as the one at Vancouver International Airport, and the shooting of Tequel Willis, who was only 14 but already a member of the Brothers Keepers. At the time and with the required concern expressed with this increase in blatant and brazen murders, they announced the launch of “Operation Spectrum”.

The review however, found that Spectrum operation “had no investigative component and only amounted to increased intelligence sharing between agencies” and that the entire project “fell short”. The report went further and said that “there are issues with CFSEU’s leadership and senior management model…and…a lack of continuity in policies and procedures”. They even added that their mandate wasn’t even clear. This is no small unit, there are 440 officers assigned to CFSEU, and they have an annual budget of about $90 million and are primarily responsible for gang activity in British Columbia. It is a large unit that according to this study were vastly under performing.

The CFSEU managers when questioned by the media weakly replied that they had not received a copy of the report. Is it possible that Police Services had this report, and were simply hanging on to it, and never felt the need to act on it? For the record the agency has been led since 2021 by A/Commissioner Manny Mann, who by default also oversees the Organized Crime Agency. One would have thought that there would have been some sort of repercussions coming from this report which was issued back in September 2023, when the questions were clearly pointing at the lack of performance, productivity and the eventual measured outcomes. As this is being written, so far nothing has been done and there has been no public accounting or explanation offered by the RCMP upper levels, who must have got a copy of the report by now.

Is this a measurement of the individual members of CFSEU? Not really, we can not draw that conclusion. Most everyone who has some insight into this unit knows that there are members of this unit who are hard-working, spending countless thankless hours and many night shifts trying to keep tabs on some of the many gangsters who run about this Province. That being said we also know that there are some members in that unit and other government units, who have their feet up, enjoy the overtime, and dream of a lucrative retirement. Let’s face it, every agency has the players of the system, the ones who are around for a free ride, the officers always being the “backup” car to keep away from the paperwork, and those that don’t simply like to leave the office.

We also know that the hard workers, the often quiet ones who toil away and make little fuss often go unrewarded. Promotion is “allegedly” based on performance, yet time and time again a great many of the laggers still find their way up the chain of command. One often is forced to the conclusion that performance is not being measured accurately or with any consistency.

Another complexity to any kind of measurement is the fact that there are many officers doing many different jobs sometimes inside the same unit, with different skill sets and different mandates and efficiencies. How do you measure a group who write warrant applications with another group that spend the majority of their time doing surveillance, or others who may be doing strictly administrative jobs.

Individually, every year every officer of the RCMP is subject to a Performance Review. It is assumed that municipal agencies have some similar process. In the RCMP the immediate supervisor outlines the good and the bad of the individual sitting before them. It is completely subjective and therefore often falls prey to individual likes or dislikes. Every supervisor also wishes to keep their charges happy, especially in this age of victims and apparent unlimited stress leaves, so inevitably these annual documents are positive. They are also rather lengthy documents and every supervisor dreads having to complete them. I have seen and heard many supervisors tell their underlings to write their own document and they will just sign it. Measuring performance in this atmosphere and style is clearly problematic and many would consider it as a form of process an abject failure, yet it has survived for decades.

Then consider the unlimited numbers of sections in the RCMP and to a lesser extent the municipal agencies, and how does one compare performance or productivity between all of the various Provinces and specialties. How does one measure the productivity or performance of someone on the Musical ride, or in Media relations, and how would you compare it with someone in uniform answering calls in Prince George or in Bella Bella or in London, Ontario. The pay structure however is uniform. All of the same rank make the same salary regardless of the unit, or the importance of that unit to the overall policing mandate. Performance or productivity does not factor in to how much one is paid. One can easily see the problem and the level of complexity. It is just as hard to find any willingness or intent to change it, or even make an attempt to measure it.

Public Safety as stated earlier, for the most part simply report on performance, they do not act or comment on those performance measures. They do direct measurements through such tools as the CSI (Crime Severity Index). If we glance at those statistics, the CSI was up 4% in 2022 the highest since 2007. Violent CSI, a different index also rose, with Robbery up 15%, Extortion up 39%, Homicide up 8% and sex assault up 3%. Non-violent CSI which applies to such crimes such as property theft is also up 4% and motor vehicle theft is up 24%.

The “volume of crime” index shows an increase of 5% to 5,668 incidents per 100,000 population. In any view, these statistics do not seem to lead one to believe that performance in policing is on the upswing, in fact it would be easier to assume that they are in fact trending negatively. However, there is no real accountability, except when for some reason a light is shone on one particular problem. In Ontario recently it is high end car thefts. An officer at a community meeting gathered some unwanted attention when he recently suggested that the public keep their keys by the front door to limit the damage from home invaders trying to steal keys. The message seemed to be, we can’t catch them so it is up to the public to limit them. Not the best statement if one were talking about trying to measure performance.

The usual answer you get when police executives face these poor numbers is to always go to the standard answer of it being due to dwindling resources, not a poor performance. In that, there is some but limited truth. In May of these same years, there were 70,566 officers, 406 more than in 2021– but still representing a 1% decrease, largely due to growth in population. Does a 1% decrease in resourcing explain the reason for what most would consider a poor performance?

This blog has always maintained that productivity and performance of units needs to be measured. In this age of sophisticated and minute data collection, one would hope that it is becoming increasingly possible and at some point there would be some attempts made to judge efficiency. It would seem key to having any viable and fully functioning organization. It also seems more necessary now than in past years to have some form of cost benefit measuring tool. There are many problems currently facing policing, but this should be considered one of the major issues, along with the need for much greater transparency. It has been plaguing policing for decades and at present, disappointingly there is no indication that they are yet willing to consider change and truly embrace the constant call for modernization.

Photo courtesy of Flickr commons by Mark Dyer – Some Rights Reserved

Amateur Sleuths, whether the Police like it or not

Posted on by Pete Cross

Curiosity is a human trait defined as a desire to learn or know something. We all have it, just some of us are blessed or cursed to have it more than others. Everyone slows and cranes their neck driving by a car accident, just for a fleeting glance of the injured or the damage. Every newscast at a crime scene will show the draped bodies on stretchers leaving the residence. All feeding the dark curiosity in all of us. There are some people with heightened curiosities, outwardly “normal” in all appearances, but consumed by the desire to know more and having the ability to question. Many have warned us about having too much of that curiosity gene. The old proverb “curiosity killed the cat” is just such a warning to those that want to ask too many questions.

There have been amateur sleuths around for centuries, persons inquiring and digging into all sorts of things, always questioning what others took for granted. We have all had at one time experienced the “nosy neighbour”. Then along came the internet monster, a multi-headed dragon with the ability to access, share and distribute information at lightning speeds, and to make everyone in the world your neighbour.

It is also well established that the police have always sought help from the public, and asked for “everyone with any information” to call. Now at every criminal event the police media types besides seeking anyone with information, now ask for anyone to provide “dash cam video”. So the police solicit all forms of information from the outside, but once received, from that point on they don’t want to share, especially any investigational detail. So the question is, have we reached a stage where that dynamic between the public and the police needs to change, or at the very least be re-considered?

In an article in LEXIPOL by Ted Bremer, he points to the growth of the amateur sleuth networks and narrows it down to a couple of incidents which he sees as the point origin for that growth; the Boston Marathon bombing, and the murder of Gabby Petito case, both American cases. He explores how amateur sleuthing in those cases, now armed with the strength of the internet, reached uncontrollable levels, and in the end turned into what he called “digital vigilantism”, and thus in turn a problem for the the police. In the Marathon case, massive amounts of photos and videos during and after the bombing were being analyzed and shared on the web site Reddit. In the Petito case, the police further spurred the public inquisitiveness by giving access to the police body cam footage. Later, the Moab City Police Department were examined for their actions on a “miniscule” level, and in the end it led to the resignation of the police chief, the entire department coming under fire, and multiple civil lawsuits.

Clearly the dangers in getting amateur sleuths involved are obvious. There are a couple of other things that need to be considered and balance the scales of concern: the internet is here to stay and the tools of this computer age are unharnessed and getting increasingly more and more sophisticated. Secondly, peoples curiosity and the need to feed it is a driving force on many societal levels. Just go look at Netflix or Crave, or the multiples of podcasts. Everyone wants to be a cop in some form or rendition and just as importantly, they don’t need to obey the rules of evidence nor are they under any form of judicial constraint.

Bremer in his article talks about the case in Idaho where four students were murdered inside a rented campus residence in November 2022. In that case one single amateur sleuth group who got involved in the Idaho case, which formed in November 2022 and by December 28, 2022 had grown to a 137,000 members. There were 10,000 posts within 30 days not to mention thousands of sub-posts. Mountains of information, some relevant, most irrelevant, swirling around the ether. In that case, it led to problems for police investigators in terms of being able to monitor and judge the reactions that came from it. In the Idaho case, almost all the information turned out to be of little or no value, in fact it led to misidentifications of suspects.

That being said, as of 2022, there have been numerous cases where the amateurs solved the crime, sometimes when the police have ignored the file or have gone down different investigational paths. The Golden State killer case is a prime example– a case that was in the end solved by forensic genealogy and DNA. Barbara Rae-Venter was a 74 year old retired patent lawyer, who also happened to have a Phd in biology. Over many months that dragged into years, Venter, and some other volunteers searched the databases of genealogical sites such as GEDMatch, and Family Tree DNA to try and find a match for the killer’s DNA. They shared their information throughout with the police, who at times provided file evidence to help them in their search. A finding of a distant fourth cousin led to the identity of Joseph James DeAngelo. He was a former police officer who eventually would plead guilty to 12 murders and having raped over 50 others during a crime spree that began in 1974 and ended with his arrest in 2018. Without the work of those volunteer sleuths, that case likely would never have been solved. DeAngelo was 74 when arrested and may have gone to the grave taking any confessional evidence with him.

In the highly acclaimed documentary “Don’t F**K with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer”, released in 2019 on Netflix, Deanna Thompson, a data analyst for a casino in Las Vegas, and John Green in Los Angelas became obsessed with a YouTube video which showed someone, disturbingly and in graphic detail suffocating two kittens. Their persistence and obsessive work ethic led to the eventual incidental solving of the murder of a university student Jun Lin. He had been killed and dismembered by Luca Magnotta, a Canadian porn actor with a sadistic and disturbing bent. They managed to lead the police to the recovery of all the evidence in the case. (Magnotta has recently been in the news over being moved to a medium security facility in Canada).

Crystal Theobold was murdered by gang members in a case of mistaken identity. Her mother, Belinda Lane, posing on-line as someone else, managed to befriend members of the gang and learn the identity of the shooter and others that were involved. It ended on charges of 1st degree murder on the shooter, and charges against others in the gang.

There is digital media consultant Billy Jensen. Jensen uses geo-targeted ads on social media to generate potential witnesses; and now claims to have solved 10 murder cases.

Needless to say the list is now very long of cases where some of the better amateur sleuths , unhindered by the normal rules of evidence gathering, have honed their amateur abilities to a level that in many cases would be un-matched in most police investigational units. Of course, there are also many others who are uncontrolled in their frenzy, often putting forward unsubstantiated theories, or making false allegations on innocents. Their laptops and their phones are their only weapons and equally concerning also their only repositories of that evidence.

To date, the police organizations, say little, and as directed by their managers, share no investigational information. On bigger cases, they will sometimes assign persons to “monitor” the social media content. Often, the amateur sleuths are met by police attitudes bordering on arrogance and with smirks of derision. In this current time and age, in particular in our relations to the internet, that seems short-sighted. Somehow the police need to harness these sleuths, possibly bring them into the fold and maybe also in terms of sharing some information. In the previously mentioned Idaho case there were 137,000 participants, but only two administrators for the site. Would it be out of the realm of possibility to bring those administrators into the police fold, specifically for that case? There would need to be rules and regulations obviously in terms of direction and evidence gathering and retention but it could be done. Deanna Thompson, Billy Jensen, or Barbara Rae-Venter would fit and be an asset for any police investigational team.

Police investigations have to work within the constraints of a budget, and human resourcing issues. You will never be able to hire all the expertise internally, it will logically have to come from outside the police environment, even if it is on some form of contractual level. It would mean that the police need to climb down off the pedestal a bit and lose the us versus them attitude. Nobody should believe that they have somehow cornered perspective and expertise in terms of any level or type of investigation, no matter what area or field of inquiry. A dogged determination and an unbendable curiosity are invaluable and seemingly they are getting harder to find. The rules and roadblocks facing todays police officers are seemingly greater than they were any number of years ago, the police often burdened by over reaching rules and legal and managerial supervision. It has created a very noticeable and pronounced sense of futility amongst many investigators especially when trying to push cases through the system. Maybe a little contracted help from the “outsiders” would be both welcome and may in fact be needed.

Photo courtesy of Leiris202 via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved

Some late Vindication…

Posted on by Pete Cross

It took a 74 year old long-time lawyer and Justice, having spent a lifetime in security related matters, someone with two feet clearly planted on the ground, to finally call out the Liberals and their authoritarian ways. In the past week, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley finally righted the wrongs of the imposition of the Emergencies Act. It was roughly two years ago that the “Act” was imposed on February 14, 2022, with grand fanfare and a concerned grimace by the Prime Minister. His forever kowtowing Ministers, and his NDP cohorts, profusely nodding in vigorous agreement standing behind him. This group of progressive liberals launched an Act designed, as it names implies, for a National Emergency, and when imposed, dictated full control over the lives of its citizens and specifically their ability to protest. There should be no mistake, this was a move that was in this writer’s opinion purely political, a move meant to show strength and determination, and aimed specifically at a group that had the audacity to question, a group that did not support the governing Liberals–in other words, they were the enemy. To put it in even simpler terms, the Liberals and their ilk did not like these protestors, these anti-vaccine rednecks, who came from afar. They were not of them.

Judge Mosley declared in his ruling that the imposition was “unreasonable and infringed on protestors charter rights”. That it did not “bear the hallmarks of reasonableness–justification, transparency and intelligibility”. He confirmed in essence what many thought –there was “no national emergency”. The faithful readers of this blog will remember a blog some months ago entitled “Sledgehammer and the Peanuts” which argued these same points; that the blaring of horns, the smell of diesel, bouncy castle encampments, and the disruption of the workday for bureaucrats in Ottawa (who were working from home through all this because of COVID) did not fit the definition, no matter how broadly interpreted, of this being a national emergency and that it certainly did not need such an all encompassing and arbitrary legal hammer.

The protest and the reaction to it did show that in Ottawa, if you put too many police departments in the kitchen, the broth will in fact be spoiled. The frustration and lack of coordination by the RCMP and the Ottawa Police Service, combined with the Doug Ford non-response, bordered on farce.

Of course this ruling was a kick in the pants for those fearless crime fighters Trudeau and Freeland; they know that this is not good in terms of going into the next election. Freeland, undeterred by a lack of factual support for her argument, went immediately running to the microphone, saying in her pedantic kindergarten teacher voice, “the safety of individual Canadians was under real threat…our national security was under real threat”. Quite an explanation.

So the Liberal government immediately have said they were going to launch an appeal. Usually the governing party of the day and any governing party would be more cautious in challenging the judiciary, normally they would “take it under advisement” or would be “studying” the case. It demonstrates the level of incomprehension amongst these Liberals as to someone having challenged their decision making, a court saying to them, no, you were wrong, and in fact you breached the Charter of Rights. How dare Judge Mosley describe the decision making at the time, as only based on “speculation” and that it had led to “unreasonable search and seizure”. The Liberals, of course have not released their legal grounds for that appeal, so I am suspecting that the Justice Department is now assigned to go find those grounds.

It is good to remember that there are four grounds to impose the Emergencies Act as clearly written: a) a public welfare emergency b) a public order emergency c) an international emergency, and finally d) a war emergency. CSIS in the Act is the defining authority in terms of what constitutes a security emergency. Clearly the latter two conditions, c) and d) didn’t apply, so the Liberals will have to continue to argue that it was a public welfare or public order emergency on a national scale. It was very interesting at the time, that CSIS Director David Vigneault in front of the Rouleau Commission, in a classic case of double-speak, said that even though the circumstances “didn’t meet the definition of a threat to national security”– nevertheless he supported the government decision. So in the end he supported what turns out to be a serious breach of rights of Canadian citizens, when he didn’t feel that there were grounds to do so. Time for Vigneault to step down.

So what will be the Liberal strategy be to fight this public relations nightmare. They are going to point to two arguments, and they have already started down this road.

First and foremost, they will point to the earlier mandated government appointed Commission that was chaired by Justice Paul Rouleau. The “appointed” Commission predictably found that it was “a failure in policing and federalism”, that it was in fact a “national emergency”. This was a bit of sleight of hand. The Commission mandate was to “examine and assess the basis for the Government’s decision to declare a public emergency…appropriateness and effectiveness of the measures selected by the government”. It was was not in fact a “legal” finding. The Federal Court with Judge Mosley on the other hand was to determine the legal “threshold” having to be met for the imposition of the Act.

Rouleau interestingly also said that it was a “difficult decision” he came to and that the “factual basis” for his finding “was not overwhelming”. I guess the lesson there for everyone is to never let the facts get in the way of a good argument.

The Commission was politically tainted, it appeared to have been set up purposely to ameliorate the decisions by the government of the day. The allowed testimony was not subject to being tested in terms of any extended cross-examination. The Minister of the day, now former Justice Minister David Lametti, during his testimony even refused to reveal the legal opinion which prompted their taking of the action, arguing lawyer client privilege. It was pointed out to him that he could have waved the privilege, but he would not. Mr. Lametti, who was so traumatized during the days of the convoy, that he moved back to Montreal, in a recent interview he now of course “disagrees totally” with Judge Mosely and is “confident” that they will win an appeal.

The other argument that the Liberals will bring is the example of what was going on at the time in Coutts Alberta and the roadblock there. It led to an investigation of an extremist group who wanted to attach themselves to the protest, and they were intercepted and charged by the RCMP. This Liberal argument is also disingenuous. The investigation and charges were brought about through the Criminal Code not the Emergencies Act. The police used the existing powers to bring that investigation to a close. So as Judge Mosley points out in his decision, the “existing laws were sufficient”, to deal with the Convoy protests, that the regular laws were open to the police and could handle the situation. The protestors that were charged, Tamara Litch and Chris Barber won’t necessarily be helped by this Federal Court decision, because they were also charged under the Criminal Code, not under the Emergencies Act.

Judge Mosley also added that “economic disruption cannot form the basis of extraordinary measures”. The Liberals during this “crisis” often argued that the Windsor border blockade was disrupting trade going into the United States. Ms. Freeland trotted that argument out again at her recent press conference, again arguing that Canada’s “economic security” was threatened. Maybe, she had not read the entire decision?

It is also interesting to read the various takes of those in the Liberal support groups, who were supportive of the government measures at the time. The CBC called it a “a divisive decision” and that illustrious leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh now says that he only “reluctantly supported the Act”. The Ottawa citizens who formed a civil class action against the protestors, which is seeking $290 million for their Wellington Street disruption, are still saying this ruling does not hurt them. Their lawyer Paul Champ argues that their case is about “honking, its about parking on the street, not for an afternoon of protest, but for weeks”. If one ever needed convincing that the citizens of Ottawa, and the bureaucrats who are governing this country live in a hermetically sealed environment, this is the case.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, a group which I rarely find agreement with, but brought the case forward to the Federal Court, said that the actions of government in this case, that the imposition of these types of laws “…are dangerous to democracy”. This decision, if looked at in a broader scope, should be seen as an examination of the very tenuous nature of democracy. The solitary Judge showed us how thin that thread really is, and for that we owe him a debt of gratitude.

Photo courtesy of Michael_Swan of Flickr Commons – some Rights Reserved.

Still Swinging to the Left

Posted on by Pete Cross

I will state from the outset, that when it comes to the political spectrum, I am boringly straight down the middle. I have never considered myself on the fringe of any pendulum, never wholly to the right, never wholly to the left. Many decades ago when I studied political philosophy and was exposed to the root beliefs of Marx and Mao, Hobbes and Rousseau, I walked away probably just as personally confused as when I started, at least in terms of having formed any hardened views. After gaining many years of wisdom, or at least I think that is what life experience gives you, I seem to have only settled on the fact that I still believe in some core values: personal responsibility and accountability, privacy, and the right to free speech. Does this mean that I may be now in the wrong country?

The current Liberal government in Ottawa and the Provincial NDP in British Columbia where I live, have for the last number of years driven us towards a system that would be defined as “socialism”. Socialism is defined as “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole”. All of our politicians, for fear of being labelled, would deny following the principles of socialism, at least in any public forum, but it is clear that they are admirers of some imagined Scandinavian styled nirvana. As they see it everyone will be protected and regulated by some form of a big, comforting, arm of government.

The current crop of Canadian politicians are going to fix housing, immigration, education, and healthcare, and while they are at it, eliminate discrimination, systemic racism, and the overall general unfairness of life. They will advocate free “safer” drugs, but insist that a single individual cigarette be labelled with the dangers of smoking in case some of missed the messaging for the last 40 years. The policing world has been led for the last number of years by sycophants who have willingly absorbed this mindset of correctness to become true champions against the horrors of inequality and the lack of inclusiveness. In order to be sanctioned by the ruling liberal elites and moved up the operational chain, they have abandoned their principles and left traditional policing values behind. They are now fully tuned to the internal goals of eliminating the enemies of the new age liberalism and willing to echo the “truth” as dictated to them.

But get outside the Canadian environ and you will find that there are developing trends in other parts of the world which are beginning to question this left liberal bias, and are now considering that maybe it has gone all gone a little too far, that maybe its time to let the pendulum swing back into some middle more normal ground. This is possibly reflecting a realization that the ridiculous aspects of the “wokeness” fringe may be driving them to political extinction.

The Canadian left power constituency want no part of any reversal of the current trend. Even with the Conservatives trouncing them in the polls, the Liberal stalwarts are doubling down on their social activism. It somewhat makes sense, all their policies are aimed at the political and demographic future voter wheelhouse. Here are a couple of recent examples.

Marc Miller, the former portfolio holder for the Indigenous, now the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship now wants to allow people who have been “illegally working and living in Canada”, and who have no documentation, that they be allowed to automatically become Canadian citizens. This would permit anywhere from 300,000 to 600,000 additional “new” Canadians. In addition, it is he and his department that will also will be overseeing the goal of 500,000 new immigrants this year (legal immigrants). Exhibiting extreme political arrogance, Mr. Miller tells his followers that he doesn’t want Canada to become “like the countries such as France, Hungary and Germany” who are reflecting the dangerous “hard far right” and are evil in their cutting back on immigration levels. He does not want to see this type of thinking “repeated in Canada”.

In the same vein, Seamus O’Regan, Justin’s long-time cohort, now sitting as the Minister of Labour, wants to make some changes to the Employment Equity Act which already sets out a “mandated diversity scheme”. The Act currently requires that the Federal government and its contractors set hiring targets for “women, visible minorities, Indigenous, and disabled”. Mr. O’Regan now plans to add LBGT and Black people to the list of those with special “hiring privileges”. The charge is being led by McGill University law professor Adelle Blackett, who is a “critical race scholar”. They steadfastly defend this policy by saying that this is not advocating a “quota system”. They try to legally get around the obvious conclusive cries of “reverse discrimination” by saying that it is fortunate because our courts, following the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, equate “equality” to mean “substantive equality”– a matter of “equal outcome” over “equal treatment.” Only academia and bureaucrats and Federal lawyers could draw this distinction.

Meanwhile, in the United States the legal stance on DEI programs is going the other direction. The big turning point was in June of this year when the Supreme Court of the United States rejected affirmative action at colleges and universities around the country, Harvard and North Carolina specifically, declaring that the “race conscious admissions programs” at those two schools were “unlawful and sharply curtailing a policy that had long been a pillar of higher education.” The Chief Justice wrote that “both programs…unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points”.

This U.S. Supreme Court ruling is now rippling downwards and resulting in the DEI programs throughout the U.S. now being put to the test. Several groups are now instituting civil action against seven different law firms for their DEI hiring practises. Why law firms? Well, they are the most risk adverse of the businesses in the U.S. If they are found to be in counter step to the current U.S. Supreme Court ruling, it is bad for business, and in turn they make their living advising the Fortune 500 companies. The plaintiff groups want to “shatter diversity fellowship programs” in these firms, which they maintain “exclude qualified white and asian students”. They are also including in those claims not just “fellowships, but hiring and recruiting retreats”.

Three of the law firms have already reversed their positions rather than duke it out in court. The plaintiffs have also demonstrated that the efforts of the last number of years with these programs has not resulted in greater black and minority representation, it still lags behind. They are also civilly pursuing particular firms where executive compensation is tied to diversity goals. So far, NASCAR, MLB, Nordstrom, and Activision Blizzard have all come under scrutiny because of their “workplace affinity groups and grants to black owned businesses”. Microsoft is now “re-examining their DEI policies” and the “explicit racist quotas and preferences in hiring, recruiting, retention, and promotion and advancement”.

Now, to be sure, we are not the United States. I am coming around to the belief that Canadians are maybe wanting a form of socialism, tax the rich, give to the poor, tell the grocery stores what they can charge, disallow AirBnb, regulate what you can say, what you can see. Maybe Canadians believe the allegations of systemic discrimination and racism. Maybe we all believe, that colour of skin or one’s gender is a greater determinant of job worthiness, and that “representation” is a better goal than academic or experience based qualifications. The strange part is that so far these enlightened programs don’t seem to help, but we Canadians are steadfast, we stay the course, disregarding the hard evidence. I guess it makes us feel better about ourselves.

Personally, I am hoping that we also begin a swing back to the middle, where rational thought and common sense seems to reside– and I am also hoping for a lot of snow in Ottawa this year– and Justin feels like going for a long walk.

Merry Xmas to you all and thanks again for reading. We will see you in the New Year.

Photo courtesy of June Marie via Flickr Commons – Some Rights reserved.

Money, Money, Money… Money everywhere

Posted on by Pete Cross

I will admit from the beginning that there is a jealous undercurrent to this story, although I am sure it is misplaced. Jealous of the current cop world is normally not where I usually find myself. I am talking about the pot of gold which can be found at the end of the Vancouver police departments rainbow. And more monies in a general sense are now being thrown into the policing circle of life than has been seen for quite some time.

The rationale varies and the rationale is wholly dependent on what side of the equation you find yourself. For the Vancouver Police Department, all is good, while on the flip side, the taxpayers of Vancouver might not be quite as charmed. The search for greater monies in the form of police salaries can sometimes cause those on the outside looking in say that those numbers are becoming excessive; especially in terms of city budgetary needs and fiscal constraints. Some would even categorize it as greedy, that there is some over-reach going on, and the justifications for it are much more tenuous. It should be noted that Plato felt that greed was a part of human nature; while Darwin in his theory of evolution felt that greed was natural and good. However despite their distinguished and historic reputations, it is unlikely that their arguments would sway many in 2023– especially those living in Vancouver.

You may not remember those days when police salaries were only in the double digits. You may forget when police salaries were never headlines, mainly because they were mid-level, average Canadian salaries. The salaries seemed in the realm of normal expectations. The average family income in 1976 as an example was $19,000 per year. My first salary in the Mounties was $13,500 in 1978. Using basic math, a cop in 1978 was therefore making about 71% of the average “family” income.

Fast forward to today and the recent headlines in the Vancouver news. The Vancouver Police Department is about to ratify a 2 year agreement which will entitle a 1st class constable (someone with at least 5 years service) a salary of $122,000. ($63.41 per hr) The average family income in Canada in 2023 is $75,452 ($39.00 per hour). Therefore, a cop working today in Vancouver will be making 161% of that average family income. In terms of other “first responders” a firefighter in Canada on average makes $83,138, 110% of the average family income. A nurse in British Columbia is $91,732, 121% of average family income. These first responder salaries it would be argued would be in line when compared with other “first responders”. When the comparison is with anyone else in public view, they are indeed eyebrow raising numbers.

In case you think an RCMP officer is now under paid, lets not forget that they too just received a large pay and retroactive increase. An RCMP officer after only three years on the job is now making a salary of $106,576, roughly 141% of that average family income.

I recently received a copy of the wage rates for the new Surrey Police Service (you know those ones battling Brenda Locke). A first class constable salary is $121,989, only slightly less than that of the new VPD raise, and if you rise to the level of Inspector with the Surrey Police Service you will be at $207,381.00. This would put one well ensconced in the top 10% of Canadian wage earners which requires a salary of at least $174,000. The median doctors salary in British Columbia is $178,810 per year.

So now you get the picture, it is in effect raining gold in the world of “first responders”. And we are not even mentioning the often gracious benefits that are also attached to some of these jobs.

The rationale provided by police spokespersons normally is two fold, that it is a thankless and dangerous job, and there is a need to sweeten the pot to attract people to the job, especially in this age of heightened public scrutiny. Ralph Kaisers of the Vancouver Police Union said that police “are finally being shown the value and support from city council…they need to be properly compensated for the work they do”. He predictably cites the “dangers of the job” and the need “to retain members” as the true drivers of this pay raise.

Let us deal with the first proposition.

There is a danger to the job, that can not be disputed. That is the primary factor when police salaries are being negotiated and has been for decades. But has that danger increased? At first blush that seems to be true. New data coming from the University of Ottawa shows that the recent 10 deaths of police officers in 8 months has not been seen since the 1960’s. But as the authors note, there are twice as many police officers working now, compared to then, therefore the overall death rate is actually lower than in the past decades. The data also shows that the leading cause of police deaths, contrary to the movies and the television, are car accidents. Justin Piche the University of Ottawa professor balks at the current claims of police officers that it is more dangerous now then in the past, and says that “…it doesn’t mean they (the Police) get to make any claims they want”. The deadliest years were 1962 and 1968 when 16 officers died in those years. Since 1962 on average there have been six and seven deaths per year while on duty. All those are tragic, and this appears insensitive when you look at cold hard figures like an actuary, but we can not dispute the numbers. From a statistical perspective, there are 70,566 police officers in Canada currently, which means as a percentage that 0.009 % of police officers are killed in the line of duty.

In Canada, union and non-union construction workers are fourth in workplace fatalities in Canada and average 20.2 deaths per 100,000 population. The top three are fishing and trapping; mining quarrying and oil wells, and logging and forestry. Policing is not even in the top 10, not even above tenth place trash and recycling collectors. Nor of course are fire personnel or ambulance attendants or nurses.

A corollary to the danger question maybe are the police busier now than then? The violent crime rate in this country according to Statistics Canada dropped dramatically from the year 2000 to 2014– then there was an upswing, from 2014 to 2021 and where it stands now is about 1/2 of what it was in 2000. Is it on the upswing, yes, is it higher than in the year 2000, no. During this time period the number of police officers in Canada have gone from 55,954 in 2000 to 70,556 in 2022, giving them a 26% increase in manpower.

It is a thankless job, but that has also been true for many many years, and in previous years there was never a need to attract people to the job so other things must have changed.

Will it help to retain members? Maybe, but that is difficult to measure. Will it attract the “cream of the crop” as described by Kash Heed, the go to analyst for CKNW and Global News? Possibly, but what makes a police officer the “cream of the crop”? There are no other jobs like it, so the prior police experience factor is the only one at play here. My guess is that you will get more officers trying to transfer from the lesser paying entities to the VPD, but whether they are the best of the best is highly debatable and definitely not a sure thing.

So what are the legitimate arguments for a pay raise for policing and in particular the VPD? It would seem that the only logical argument has been the increase in inflation. The last two years have seen 6-8% inflation rates; the VPD raise amounts to 4.5 per cent per year, for a total of 9%. Mr. Kaiser needlessly points out that “our members feel it when they go to the gas station or to the grocery store”. Hopefully he is not implying that other parts of our society don’t have that same feeling.

As an aside, of course, not everyone in society gets an inflation levelling pay raise in Canada, so the police unions with their greater societal levers can lead the way in any clawing back of earnings that have been lost to inflation. Statistically, inflation has a greater negative impact on lower income families– so the average family income which was mentioned previously, is going to be proportionally hurt by inflation much more than the higher income levels. Milton Friedman, the Nobel prize winning economist would say that inflation is ” a result of too much money…a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than an output”.

Of course the biggest immediate problem with this raise is that for the people of Vancouver it will add $30 million to the annual cost of policing in the City. Which in turn means a 2.5% increase in property taxes to cover the extra policing costs. The VPD’s 2024 budget is a net $415.9 million, $6million more than the finance team was “comfortable” with; and $42 million more than the department began operating with in 2023. The VPD is also expecting to run a $3.6 million deficit this year (They also had to throw in an extra $3.3 million for the Vancouver Fire Department). As an aside you should remember that the VPD union endorsed the current Mayor Ken Sim in his election in 2022. For his part, Sim recently put in place a “budget task force” to look into areas where savings could be found–the VPD budget is not part of that review. It is estimated that by 2028 the policing budget will be approaching $500 million.

Chief Palmer in speaking about the budget is sees it as somewhat as a fait accompli; he says “so if you go back to 1990 and you look at the trajectory its always been 20-21% (increase) which is what it is today, and what it will be in 2024, and I am sure in 2028”. In others words, there is nothing you can do about it. He says, “It costs a lot to keep Vancouver safe. Thats what it costs and people get great value for their money”.

Mr. Palmers salary by the way in 2022 was $493,932 with an additional $48,282 in allowable expenses. He is overseeing 1400 police officers. In terms of responsibility, the Prime Minister of Canada annual salary is $357,800. He is overseeing the Federal public service which now has 335,957 employees, and revenues of $457 billion. Clearly Mr. Palmer is doing very well personally and is a long way from the average worker.

The million dollar question (in keeping with the money theme), is whether or not there any saturation point? Is there some point where people begin to ask or question the ever constant growth in policing costs, which will in turn at some point force us to talk about layoffs rather than hiring? Some tough questions, despite Mr. Palmers nonchalance on the issue, are clearly just around the corner.

Photo courtesy of Bruce.Guenter via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved

A Murder Myth

Posted on by Pete Cross

In this age of crime podcasts and burgeoning internet sleuths, I think there may be room for a podcast or blog, whose topical subject would be all the “false” or “fictitious” information around murder cases; we could call it “Jumping to Conclusions” or “Spreading the Lie”. I was inspired to this notion this morning when I somewhat absently listened to the Simi Sara show on CKNW. Simi is the celebrated morning host for the station; who is always willing, armed with little or no knowledge I might add, to offer up solutions to fix all the wrongs in our current society. (Spoiler Alert: the solution is always more resources or more monies) She is a quick worker and can usually figure out a problem and find a solution in five minutes or less. Her investigative or journalistic “technique” is to mirror a viewpoint of her guest, a guest who always comes with an agenda, and she never feels the need to challenge or show any curiosity, she is there to agree and reinforce, on the one condition of course that it fits within the progressive acceptable dialogues.

Today’s topic on CKNW was the Highway of Tears; which was in turn entirely prompted by the finding of the body of Chesley Anita Quaw (Heron) age 29, who went missing on October 11, 2023. Chesley was an indigenous young woman who went missing from the Saik’uz First Nation, a Nation located about 85 kms west of Prince George. But the crux of the CKNW story was founded on the fact that because of where the Nation is situated, next to Highway 16, the “Highway of Tears”. And this fact alone is all the invitation that is needed for CKNW to draw a conclusion and a headline, and conflate the Indigenous narrative.

So Ms. Sara and her fellow journalists and editors at CKNW, despite having no information about the actual circumstances surrounding the death of Ms. Quaw, inferred that she must have been murdered, and that she is another victim of the “Missing and Murdered”, those that have ended along the Highway of Tears. The Highway of Tears story is an over-extended narrative which almost all news reporters have been feasting on for several years now. The Indigenous spokespeople in turn continue to fuel the narrative, after all it works in their best interests in terms of demanding a re-focusing to their plight and corollary to the need for more services and funding. So on this day, CKNW needed a guest who would talk about the “Highway of Tears” and the death of Ms. Quaw so it came about on this day that journalism was taken down another notch by Ms. Sara and her illustrious team of no fact-checking journalists. The 10 minute story was completely irresponsible, and not based on a single fact. It was shameful, and should offend anyone who relies on the news to at least bear some shred of truth and authenticity.

This was not inadvertent. Simi Sara started the show with the disclaimer that there “are no details yet”. This is an age where corroboration or confirmation is fleeting at best, although still taught in the journalism schools, it is no longer being exercised in the field. So having no details was not a deterrent to going ahead with the story, their story, one based on assumption and conjecture. They were also more than willing to comment and form a conclusion– the goal of which clearly was to resurrect the Highway of Tears narrative for dramatic affect. Her selected guest was Morgan Asoyuf, an “artist” from the Ts’msyen Eagle Clan, who was more than willing to reinforce and illustrate the CKNW investigative assumption. No need to bring on someone with at least some minimal credentials, just someone willing to be part of the act, someone that would not deterred by the lack of fact.

The show started with Simi pondering and talking about her general exasperation on having to deal with another story involving this infamous highway: “Why we are still talking about deaths on the “Highway of Tears?” She followed that up with the burning and completely inane question to her guest “Has it got any better?” (meaning one can only presume the murders on the highway) No, was the sought after answer and the guest quickly complied, and then warming to the narrative, went one step further, and added that in fact it had “gotten a lot worse”.

Simi mimicked the artist’s concern and asked her to of course elaborate. So Ms. Asoyuf went on to describe the “multiple incidents of potentially violent situations” she had encountered over these many years in driving on the highway, and then weirdly laughed when telling of the evidence that she had many times encountered “men yelling at me”. Simi was clearly dismayed and asked her how she copes with this potential violence and how she manages to fend off this always lurking danger– “how do you protect yourself?” Ms. Asoyuf then described how when she drives this remote highway, she lets friends or relatives know where she is going, and what time she is leaving. “Thats sad” replies Simi.

This moronic interview continued, with Simi asking of course as to how the community is “coping” with the finding of the body. Ms. Asoyuf is clearly now emboldened to the topic offers up her insights in these matters. She prefaces her remarks by saying that of course “as native people we are always hoping to find them alive”. She then further explains that because “these are our traditional territories” that these deaths are the “direct result of colonization” and the “targeting of indigenous women…so much racism…they think that they can kill us and get away with it”.

The interview show thankfully ends with Simi thanking the guest for her time and then attempts to sum up the devastating story we had just heard by saying, that clearly there “is no adequate safety measures” in that part of the world, and asks the audience to try and imagine a world her guest had described– one in which a woman “has to take preventative measures”. The predictable solution, by the way, was a need for “more resources” and “more funding” for “murder investigation”.

Before we go any further, here are a couple of basic facts about this particular case. Chesley Quaw was found in a wooded area “on reserve land.” Currently, there is no tie-in to the highway. Secondly, the police say that this is a Coroners case, which implies that the cause of death was not readily apparent, and the cause of death may not even be homicide. Cause of death had yet to be determined, so everything said in the media and bandied about on the social networks was nothing more than pure speculation.

This over-sized myth of murdered and missing grows and grows, by repetition, not by evidence. It is time for some context. Here are some numbers recently provided by Statistics Canada; and let us also agree that bald numbers for the most part don’t lie. They can be fudged and twisted, but they don’t lie.

These statistics are for the years 1980-2014, and during this time, there were 6,849 female homicide cases reported in Canada. Of that number 16% were indigenous women, clearly a number in greater representation to their 5% or less of the entire Canadian population. Since 1991, the number of murdered non-indigenous women has declined, while the rate of murdered Indigenous women has remained stable. Therefore, the rate of homicide for Indigenous women was almost six times higher than non-indigenous women– and in 2014 they accounted for 21% of female homicide victims. Clearly and undoubtedly there is a problem in the Indigenous community, clearly Indigenous women are getting murdered at an alarming rate. That is not a question.

The question is– is this due to colonization? Or Racism? According to the Indigenous of course it is, everything ties to colonialism. But the true answer is much more nuanced.

Between 1980 and 2014, half (53%) of the Indigenous homicides were committed by a family member, another 26% by an acquaintance– and a mere 8% by strangers. Therefore 79 % of Indigenous women were killed by a family member or a friend and acquaintance. Another interesting fact is that only 66% of those indigenous women were killed in a residence, in comparison to non-indigenous women, who were killed in a residence 88% of the time. So 17% of those indigenous women killed were killed on a street, road, or a highway, which is probably a reflection of a dangerous led lifestyle by the victim.

So the story and headline should be that Indigenous women in the vast majority of cases are being killed by their own friends and family. If Ms. Quaw is in fact a victim of homicide, the first place to look as an investigator, is to her family and friends. Not to a passing motorist on Highway 16. That is just the sad fact.

So Ms. Sara– lets do a story on the problems that infect and flourish on the reserves or Indigenous nations of this country. Take your pick on the topic. The poverty, the drug abuse, the alcoholism, the rampant birth rates, the dysfunctional families, or the ongoing in-house violence. Is the poverty the result of colonization, or is it the fact that many reserves are in un-sustainable economic regions, allowing poverty and needed government support to become a way of life? If you find poverty and drug and alcohol abuse you will undoubtedly find violence. Is ill-education the result of historic abuse or a much broader cultural and social disconnect with the 21st century? The residential schools after all were set up, however badly they performed, to address a culture and a society which was in the opinion of the politicians at the time, being left behind. Now, with guilt thrust upon us, billions upon billions of dollars are now being expended for the same reasons towards education, health and economic start ups. Is anything working? Do we need to re-examine the current concept that more money will insure success? Most importantly is there any level of personal and social responsibility in play here? Is it possible to have some introspection, or is it all the fault of the colonizers? It is easy to blame historic treatment, but surely even this argument’s validity diminishes over time.

Ms. Sara wants you to believe that Ms Quaw died because of a highway driving serial killer– there is a much greater chance she was killed or died unnaturally, because of how she lived, where she lived, and the people she was surrounded and raised by. It is time to deal with those facts and to address the underlying and dominant issues of violence and death in Indigenous society. I was offended by this story by CKNW, both as a former homicide investigator, but just as importantly as a human being wanting to find answers.

It is undeniable that we are currently in a place and time where no current government, at any level, has the courage to answer the relevant questions because of the risk of being branded as a neanderthal racist. There is no corporate entity who does not facilitate or play to the “enlightened” vocal few, there is no university willing to question rather than comply. Until there is, solutions seem unlikely, as it seems that all hard truths are only uncovered by open, fair, and honest and questioning discourse. The Report in 2019 from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls said that the “victims” was the result of a “Canadian genocide”, that the violence occurred through “state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies”. As the years tick by, it’s becoming a weaker and weaker argument.

Maybe its time to look a little deeper, maybe its time for the Indigenous leadership to look a little inward. Maybe the answer is not just “economic reconciliation” but a reconciling and an accurate accounting of the human tragedy inside the Indigenous nations of which they are a part.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons via Adam Jones – Some Rights Reserved