The police always need to be changing gears to more community-style policing and the police always need to ever more self-conscious about appearances... no matter what they're currently doing or what changes they've made previously. Are these yet more phantom objectives that can never actually be reached? More perpetual crises?
The cognitive dissonance is strong here as well (as it tends to be in every longstanding political/media narrative). On the one hand the police departments have received endless grief for their lack of diversity and for not being sufficiently community-focused, but on the other hand they're still not doing nearly enough profiling by skin colour and other attributes. They really need to step up the labeling and the categorizing and the de-individualization. You know, in order to combat it.
Victoria News
June 10, 2020
Police board requests racial, gender analysis of Victoria police force
Board’s motion one of many working to address racism, discrimination in policing
The Victoria Police Department will undergo an analysis to reveal the racial and gender composition of its members against that of the general population, following a decision by the Victoria and Esquimalt Police Board.
The results of that analysis, which will look at Black, Indigenous, other people of colour, and women – will provide a baseline for focused recruiting, according to VicPD. The motion is one of four adopted by the police board at a meeting June 9 in an effort to look at “current processes and practices” and find ways to improve.
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Changing the face of the force
Times-Colonist
21 Mar 2005
Police efforts to build cultural diversity and sensitivity are showing signs of paying off.
The perception of Greater Victoria police forces as white, male organizations stuck in their North American culture is changing, thanks to a concerted effort to reach out to minorities in the community and knock down the cultural barriers that keep some people from calling police.
A way of checking progress is to see if police department personnel reflect the diversity found in the community, said Const. Leslie Whittaker of the Victoria police staffing office. About six per cent of the 212 officers on staff are from visible minorities, while 24 per cent are women, including one self-identified lesbian, said Whittaker.
"Are we representative of the city we police? We're becoming more so but we've got a long way to go," she said.
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New recruits give police diverse look
Times-Colonist
22 Mar 2004
The big hole left by a recent round of retirements turned out to be a window of opportunity for the Victoria police department. It allowed the organization to step up efforts to ensure diversity is a priority in hiring.
The focus sits well with people dedicated to such topics, like Linda Sproule-Jones, director of equity issues for the University of Victoria's office of equity and human rights.
"It's important, particularly if we believe the police ought to reflect the community and include the different perspectives that make up our law-abiding citizenship.
"We've also actively gone to career fairs with different community groups and university groups to encourage applications from everybody within the community, so it's a diverse group we're getting applications from -- whether it's somebody from the aboriginal community or the gay and lesbian community or the Asian community or the Muslim community.
"We've been actively going to groups so that we can better reflect those communities."
One example is having a police booth at Victoria's annual Gay Pride Parade, Bond said.
People have no obligation to divulge information about their lifestyles, she added.
"If they choose not tell us, fair enough. If they want to tell us and they meet all the requirements that we're looking for then that's awesome because then they reflect their community well."
"Our hope is that the bottom line is we have a huge cross- section of experiences and diversity."
Twenty-three per cent of the Victoria force is female, well above the national average of 13 per cent.
"In 1992, there was 15 women, and in 2004, we've got 49."
The rise has nothing to with "affirmative action," Bond said. "The women that we've hired are absolutely just as capable as everybody else."
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Police reach out to bolster diversity
Times-Colonist
11 Apr 2002
Back in the days when Victoria's cultural rainbow spanned every colour from Scottish to English, diversity wasn't a big buzzword in the city police department.
"When I started in 1974, I was the only visible minority on the force," says Sgt. Derek Chow. Oh, and there was a woman, too.
So it was notable on Wednesday when Chow and Saanich deputy chief Mike Chadwick announced the RCMP and five local municipal forces will form a regional diversity advisory committee. They'll be looking to include members "from the First Nations community, visible minority and ethnic groups, people of every sexual orientation, and academics in the field of diversity."
But since the mid-'70s, when the Mounties decided the force needed to better reflect the community, there's been a steady change. In 1970, less than one-third of one per cent of all Canadian police officers were female. That rose to 2.2 per cent in 1980, and to 12.9 per cent in 1999.
Chow, the lone ranger back in 1970, today belongs to a department whose 192 members include 14 members of visible minorities and 38 women. Saanich's makeup is of comparable proportion.
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Massive police changes urged by judicial inquiry
Times-Colonist
16 Sep 1994
Justice Wallace Oppal called for more community-style policing and greater integration of police forces in the Capital Region in the report released Thursday, although he stopped short of recommending amalgamation.
He also urged more hiring of women and minorities, saying the province's overwhelmingly white, male police forces are out of touch with the communities they serve.
Oppal was quite concerned about the small number of women, visible minorities, natives and gays and lesbians hired for police work.
Women make up more than half of the population but only 10.5 per cent of the Victoria Police Department, 11.6 per cent of Saanich's and 11.5 per cent of the RCMP in the province, he noted.
Oppal's $4-million report covers everything from police dogs to chokeholds.
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Daily Colonist
August 22, 1979
New police chief must be outsider
Ald. Blencoe wants to see a person hired with special skills "to meet the challenges of the difficult 1980s."
The new chief's major emphasis should be a return to a stronger sense of community, to break down large institutions into smaller units that people can understand and to whom they can related, he said.
"We need a chief who is sensitive to this developing attitude and committed to finding ways of bringing the department and the community it serves much closer."
Equality of opportunity was another obvious trend of the 1980s, he said, observing that historically women and minority groups had not been involved to any great degree in police work. The person chosen must be able to find ways of changing this situation.
Edited by aastra, 10 June 2020 - 06:01 PM.
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