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Toronto Police mounted officers stand guard as divers search for evidence in the murder of 10-year-old Holly Jones in Toronto, May 14, 2003. (CP Photo/Kevin Frayer)
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INDEPTH: MUNICIPALITIES » CITY STATES
Policing the modern city, Part 1
CBC News Online | August 6, 2004
Reporters: Yvette Brend and Dave Seglins
Producer: Margaret Daly
 LISTEN: Part one (Runs 26:13)
Staff Sergeant Frank Bergen of Toronto's downtown 51 Division tries to put his finger on exactly what's different about policing a big city today, even from ten years ago. "It's the unknown," is the closest he can come, as he snaps out directions to a team of cruisers following up 9-1-1 calls.
The officers in those cruisers agree. "Frustration, of the lack of resources… Sitting here in a police car and having twenty outstanding calls," when you want to deal with priority issues, with the safety of the community.
And it's the danger, adds the officer who's taking reporter Dave Seglins with him on a night-shift tour. Dave's wearing a Kevlar vest for the assignment, and the officer emphasizes: "That's not for show - it's the reality."
Violence 20 years ago used to be a couple of drunks in a bar fight. Ten years ago, even, you worried about biker gangs - nasty, but at least you knew who they were, and where. Now… "It's these little gangs, these turf wars, five guys on a corner, and it's not uncommon for the Young Offender to be packing a gun."
Policing has changed and a lot of officers wonder if it's still worth the risk. They feel as though they don't have the respect, the relationship with the community that they used to. Reporter Yvette Brend takes us into the home - and the heart - of Sergeant Judy Nosworthy, who tries to explain why it's important to remember that police officers are people, who walk their dogs and water their lawns and play with their kids, just like the rest of us.
Yet Nosworthy concedes that the nature of their work means they're not just like the rest of us. Not when you answer a question like "How was your day?" this way: "Well, I got in my car and it smelled like puke, and, hmm, let's see, I arrested a hooker at 6:30 in the morning who was doing the morning rush. And I strip-searched her and she had lice, so I had to send my uniform off to be de-loused…" So you end up saying nothing.
Brend and Seglins bring front-line police officers to life for us in this intimate program. And they are the first to admit that fighting crime, per se, is a small part of their job. They spend most of them time dealing with homeless psychiatric patients, runaways with drug habits, immigrants stressed out by the pressures of a strange new way of life… In other words, people whose problems ought to be the bailiwick of the social safety net.
They're wrestling social dragons like drug abuse, poverty, and mental illness with an inappropriate arsenal of tools - often the most useless of which is their gun. And they know that, as Judy Nosworthy puts it, "as society changes, if we as police don't change as well, we get left behind."
Policing the modern city, Part 2
CBC News Online | August 14, 2004
Reporters: Yvette Brend and Dave Seglins
Producer: Margaret Daly
LISTEN: Part two (Runs 18:30)
Reporters Yvette Brend and Dave Seglins have spent years covering the police in Canada's biggest cities – from the multiple murders on Vancouver's Lower East Side, to investigations of high-level corruption in Toronto's drug squad.
But one thing they've learned is that many – maybe even most – of the problems faced by big-city police come from people who've slipped through the so?called "social safety net": victims of domestic violence, drug addicts, the mentally ill, stressed immigrants who can't cope with urban Canadian society…
In other words, people whose troubles might have been dealt with before they ever became "police problems."
John Sewell, a former mayor of Toronto and author of a book called Urban Policing in Canada, says the problem starts with how we define the job of our police. Prevention of crime, he says, should be the responsibility of social agencies that deal with poverty, addiction, homelessness, domestic abuse and so on. Instead, we've made the police a catch-all agency to handle societal problems instead of leaving them to deal strictly with criminal acts.
Other critics emphasize leadership. When an institution faces turmoil and change, you reform it from the top.
Joseph D'Cruz teaches the police chiefs of tomorrow – in a program at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. He believes that its most important effect has been to take action-oriented individuals, who've been conditioned to react quickly above all, and turn them into reflective, analytical leaders.
A police chief's job is more complex than it used to be, he says – because society is more complex, especially in Canada's biggest cities, which are among the most multicultural in the world.
Police forces are trying to reflect the city's multiculturalism by recruiting from ethnic communities. But a Toronto police sergeant and a civilian who've been assigned to do that agree that it's slow, uphill work.
And recruiting minorities is only one way of ensuring the police reflect their communities. Critics wonder why rank-and-file police are educated at separate police colleges, in the midst of rural communities – rather than at community colleges and universities in the cities they'll serve.
They also note that most big-city officers live outside their cities in suburban neighbourhoods that are far more homogeneous than the streets they patrol. Urban policemen and women resist the idea of living in inner cities – they want to get away from all that when they're off work.
Then there's the whole question of police accountability – of who polices the police. In some big American cities, notably Los Angeles and New Orleans, federal government-appointed monitoring agencies oversee local forces – and will until they're satisfied the forces have cleaned up their records on brutality and corruption. Hazel de Burgh – who works out of Toronto, as an investigator monitoring the police in Los Angeles – says her work not only roots out bad apples but protects good cops, too.
Canadian cities don't seem ready for that kind of action yet. But critics say the local and provincial police accountability boards we have in place need to be strengthened. Other urban issues and policies such as transit planning, development and so on are made through open debate, say the critics. We need the same kind of debate about what the police do, and how they do it.
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List of big city mayors, from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities:
Vancouver: Larry Campbell
Surrey: Doug W. McCallum
Calgary: David Bronconnier
Edmonton: Bill Smith
Regina: Pat Fiacco
Saskatoon: Don Atchison
Winnipeg: Sam Katz
Brampton: Susan Fennell
Hamilton: Larry Dilanni
Kitchener: Carl Zehr
London: Anne Marie DeCicco
Mississauga: Hazel McCallion
Ottawa: Bob Chiarelli
Windsor: Eddie Francis
Toronto: David Miller
Gatineau: Yves Ducharme
Montréal: Gérald Tremblay
Laval: Gilles Vaillancourt
Québec: Jean-Paul L'Allier
Longueil: Jacques Olivier
Halifax: Peter J. Kelly
St. John's: Andy Wells
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Watch Brian Stewart's documentary "Cities: The Last Colonies"
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