Ottawa Citizen - January 31, 2011
By Colin Kenny
Vern White came to town a few years ago as a highly regarded police chief, savvy about modern policing methodology and insightful about social and psychological factors that contribute to criminal behavior.
Lately, however, White has taken a few shots in the media, mostly over some ugly incidents that have shown that not all Ottawa cops have demonstrated the patience needed to do their jobs properly when push comes to shove.
The questionable arrest and harsh treatment of Stacey Bonds videotaped in the Ottawa police station cellblock was the most blatant example. That’s now under review by the Special Investigations Unit. But five other allegations of abuse were brought to the public’s attention when White ordered a system-wide search in the wake of the Bonds incident.
During all this commotion White got hit by some bad optics and bad timing – he went off to be married in Finland, and one of the guests at the wedding was Eli El-Chantiry, Chair of the Ottawa Police Services Board that White answers to. White wasn’t in hiding in Finland – he explained publicly why he was going, and didn’t try to hide the fact that El-Chantiry has become a good friend.
Still, tongues began to wag. During the past week Ottawa Life magazine argued that both White and El-Chantiry should resign. Part of the publisher’s complaint about White was “if he did not see (the video) before it was shown to the judge, he is completely incompetent. If he did, it means upon seeing it he did nothing, which is even worse!”
The author said that it was “disturbing” that nobody asked White whether he had seen the video before it hit the media. Huh? First, why would White be “completely incompetent” if he didn’t see the video before the crown attorney’s office and the judge did?
In fact, White has asked lawyers and prosecutors to advise him when they come across allegations of police misdoings. In this case, nobody uttered a peep.
Secondly, if Ottawa Life wants to pose as a journalistic institution, shouldn’t the publisher himself have asked White whether he had seen the video beforehand? That’s what journalists do. White’s accessibility is well-known. Street cops have his phone number, and he answers the phone. He also answered hundreds of e-mails from the public on the cell block incident. Doesn’t this publisher know about e-mail?
The truth – as White publicly told the police commission last week – is that he first learned of the video October 29th, after the judge made it public. I repeat, that’s the Crown’s fault, not his.
Last week another article appeared in the Citizen, strongly suggesting that White was insensitive to the needs of minority groups – notably people of colour and gays – and that the Ottawa Police Force’s community outreach programs were suffering from Chief White’s inattention. The story quoted an unidentified source as saying minority officers have been leaving the service because they are disillusioned.
Really? Well the numbers presented to the Police Services Board last week show that between 2003 and now, the Ottawa Police has hired 539 people. Of these, 152 have been female, and 116 (21.5 percent) have been visible minorities. Since 2004, 67 persons have resigned from the service; 20 of them have been women, and 9 have been visible minorities.
It may be true that the nine visible minorities who have left since 2004 were all disillusioned, just as it is possible that the 47 white males who left were disillusioned. Or some of them may have found better jobs, or had other reasons. We don’t know. But who would call these damning numbers? White doesn’t pretend that revamping the mindset of a police service is easy or will happen overnight, but nine people leaving doesn’t constitute a diaspora.
White has pushed for outreach into gay and visible minority communities, but he will tell you that he has other priorities as well. They include the mentally ill, drug addicts and street people, who count for about 80 percent of the police service’s clientele. White pushed hard for the opening of drug treatment centres in Ottawa, and two have been established since he came on board.
The most impressive thing about what White has done since the Stacey Bonds incident – beyond the transparency with which he has demanded from his police service on this issue – is the remedies he has put in place.
There is a long list of these that were made public earlier this week (see Police spell out rules on strip searches, Ottawa Citizen, Jan. 22). He has drummed into every officer in the service that the law says that if strip searches are required, they must be done by someone of the same sex. Period. But the most impressive new initative he has taken is that on a round-the-clock basis, one of the seven rotating sergeants who are posted to the cell block is required to challenge every officer bringing someone into custody as to why they were arrested, and to ascertain whether they have done something serious enough to (a) constitute a danger to themselves; and/or (b) constitute a danger to the public.
Not all officers like this – it lengthens the arrest procedure, and can call their judgment into question. But it is designed to assure that the next Stacey Bonds (and there will inevitably be one) is not kept in custody. People who have clearly not broken the law should not end up in jail. This is White’s mantra, and he preaches it to his officers, over and over again.
That doesn’t always make him popular with his staff. But it should win him some respect with reporters and the public. A recent Leger poll showed that 80 percent of Ottawans support White after all the bad stuff that has happened recently. It should be higher, because this guy gets it about the complexity of modern-day policing, and that while transparency can damage your image with the public from time to time, it is absolutely essential to maintaining public trust.
I talked to White recently. He’s got big shoulders, like most cops do, and he shrugged them when I said I thought some of this criticism was unfair. “I’m okay with unfair now and then,” he replied with a smile.
Well I’m not okay if the people criticizing him aren’t taking care to get it right. Because I think this guy sets the standard for police leaders across Canada.
[Colin Kenny is former chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. Kennyc0@sen.parl.gc.ca]