“Taking Back Our Streets” Means Diverting Funds Away From The Ottawa Police Force
Throughout the past few years, ongoing scandals and incidents of police brutality have taken the center stage in the mainstream media. For many, these incidents are a constant reality.
In April of this year, the Ottawa Police Force created a Homicide Task Force after years of struggling to clear homicide rates that disproportionately impacted young men from marginalized communities. A strategy only the Ottawa Police Service seemed to believe in, as they spun misleading hopes built on a roadmap of a “high probability’’ and “newer investigative techniques” to solve cold cases. There was no explanation as to how this newly formed task force overcame the conventional wisdom of experts who believed cases with little witness participation and no solid leads within the first 72 hours had little chance of being solved — regardless of expertise and resources. Furthermore, it does not appear there was any strategic effort that addressed common sense research that linked mistrust between police and communities with lower solvency rates and higher levels of violence — as this confident task force was established at a time when police and community relations were at a volatile point.
Yet in June, after a weekend of homicides that took the lives of four racialized young men, the complexity of the issue resulted in yet another proposal from the police. Chief Sloly requested an increase in the police budget for a “youth gang strategy” that would use ‘’reformed gang members’’ to counsel youth away from violence. An idea that seemed to be inspired by the show “Beyond Scared Straight’’ — featuring inmates who explosively instil fear into young people impacted by the criminal legal system. This questionable proposal under the guise of prevention is what continues to fail communities, as police and their partners continue to tiptoe around the issues that create conditions of community tragedies in the first place.
The combination of widespread public mistrust and problem-oriented policing is something the Ottawa Police Force cannot seem to figure out, as they continuously generate outdated strategies to combat their own need for relevance. This time — looking in the direction and waving their fingers sternly at the most grieving and impacted communities to “take back their streets’’.
The very essence of this statement illustrates the historical divide between community and police relations — highlighting the “us-vs-them” mentality that has always separated “their” streets and “our” streets. Much of this messaging is centred around problematizing and re-victimizing the community to bear the burden of these tragedies. In every media opportunity, Ottawa Police has managed to use homicide victims and grieving families to defend the value of their enforcement presence, despite knowing what they offer is empty promises of safety and justice. Even their closest partner, Crime Prevention Ottawa managed to untangle their web of myths in a recent report on homicides that reiterated what the community already knew — ‘’ that young racialized men are often victims of gun violence and these cases are often less likely to be solved by the police’’.
As our streets have been screaming about the youth crisis for decades now, the Ottawa Police Force is still wrestling with its own legitimacy crisis, further fueling and reaffirming the community’s cynicism towards the police. In an effort to re-legitimize policing initiatives, the police continually refer to dialogues with the “community”, but fail to recognize that communities are not collectively unified and often divided by values, inequities, and pritorties. Today, community-led approaches are just buzzword campaigns promoting the false notion that law enforcement can solve structural inequities through partnerships with the community. Even after all these reforms that have occurred during the last decade, we are still unable to explain the emergence of today’s national police crisis. Once again, the burden is placed on the community to blindly cooperate in the name of justice, while negotiating their own safety within a systemic institution that reeks of police accountability deficiencies.
The Ottawa Police Service, however, has come up with yet another simple ploy to crack the code of silence — their newly developed five step strategy: (1) Come forward; (2) Speak to us; (3) Give us a statement; (4) Go on camera in the interview room; (5) Give us that information so we could proceed. Though seemingly effortless, the message completely ignores the similarities and complexity of their Omertà (blue wall of silence). This unofficial oath of silence is deeply ingrained in the policing system, one that is based on secrecy and solidarity among officers to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.
While, this five-step appeal could not survive among themselves and within wider police culture. It completely ignores the most fundamental reformist idea — which relies on the vital need for police to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the communities they serve. Legitimacy is therefore defined as the public’s trust and confidence in the police as serving them in a fair and equitable manner. A crisis that Ottawa Police is still trying to address within their own service and among their own ranks.
The failure to effectively deal with their own internal crisis and low member morale behind closed doors is just one element that continues to spill over into ‘’our streets’’. The low morale among police officers has little to do with their experiences with the community and everything to do with their own politics, practices, and policing culture. Yet, a glimmer of hope came in late 2019, when Peter Sloly was sworn in as the new ‘’progressive’’ Chief of Ottawa Police tasked with restructuring and cleaning up policing. However, the odds were stacked against him — as he inherited a workplace plagued by deep conflicts and a bureaucratic system that was designed to undermine, resist, and defy any type of change.
In January 2016 — Sloly resignation speech as Deputy Chief of Toronto Police Service stated the following, “I’ve never seen policing at this low a point in terms of public trust and legitimacy. I feel there’s a crisis in the offing, not just here but right across North America. We run all over the city in the most unfocused way, reacting to what you call us for, as opposed to trying to understand what’s going on and putting our most important resources in the best place.”
The takeaway message here is that any efforts to reform a system built on a set of deliberate policies and practices is intrinsically infeasible. It is certain that the institution’s militarized “war on crime’’ mentality is extended to anyone, including their very own officers that threaten to restructure and unveil the blue Omertà. Now, how can the public seek justice and support from an institution that was fundamentally designed to enforce power and preserve social order?
The heartbreaking truth remains unchanged. Policing does not serve to prevent harm, nor is their definition of “solvency” one that can ensure community safety. Arrests and convictions of major cases are often considered breakthrough moments in the career of police, and serve only to continue the cycle of criminalization and violence. Yet, they continue to demand community support and budgetary demands that only work to deplete the community of resources. The criminalization of young people continues to be framed as efforts to make our schools and communities safer. Each year, millions of our tax-paying dollars are poured into homicide and gang task units to fight the war on youth. Despite evidence that points to the importance of investing in mental health, housing, education, and employment as protective factors to public safety — they remain fixated on incarceration. This corrosive cycle of denial, public mistrust, and lack of imagination for community safety ultimately leads to more youth tragedies and community grief. The community has long made pleas rooted in despair and pain. However, we appear to be more attuned to the concerns and needs of the police than to those of the community. It’s time Ottawa Police Service re-allocate funds from their multi-billion-dollar budget into building resilience and thriving communities. We need a chance to offer our youth a promising future without the risk of death and incarceration. This is how we “take back our streets.”
