The Record’s crime reporter Cayley Dobie recently sat down with the New Westminster Police Department’s two previous chief constables and its current leader to hear how policing in the Royal City has changed since the mid ‘90s.
In this first installment, the chiefs discuss how they came to be in New West and the challenges they faced in the 1990s.
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It can be intimidating walking into a room of police officers whose total experience amounts to nearly one century of fighting crime.
But Peter Young, Lorne Zapotichny and Dave Jones don’t come off as the time-hardened cops you’d imagine after decades of policing. Instead they seem like the type of men you’d see sitting in the local Tim Hortons gabbing about the good ol’ days.
Young was in his 25th year as a police officer for the Peel Regional Police Service when he applied for the chief constable position in New Westminster.
At the time, the department was without a chief following the early retirement of Jack Fordham, the department’s previous chief.
Fordham’s time as chief was plagued by rumours regarding his performance as head of the department. Complaints concerning Fordham’s management of the department, brought forward by officers within his own department, surfaced in early 1994. An outside consultant was eventually hired by the New Westminster Police Board to look into the management of the department after reports indicated there was low morale among officers.
In January 1995, the police board announced Fordham had accepted a settlement for early retirement and would officially end his term as chief at the end of the month.
Fordham’s early retirement left the department scrambling to find a replacement. Without anyone from within the department ready to step into the top position, longtime New West police officer Jim Thomson took on the role of acting chief until a search committee was formed to look at candidates from outside the department.
The search committee received 83 applications from across the country but it was Young who, in 1996, was chosen as the new chief constable of the New Westminster Police Department.
“I came here for an interview in early March for my first time in the city ever and there was something about it right away that I said, ‘I think I really want this job,’” Young recalls.
Young says he and his wife fell in love with the Royal City. The pride residents have for the city and the way they cherish the past is a remarkable thing, he says.
“The way the community is in New Westminster, you felt an obligation to do your job for the people, it wasn’t just a word, it was a commitment to the city,” Young says.
This passion would prove an important tool during Young’s four years as chief. During that time, the city experienced a spike in crime. Street crime, panhandling and gang violence were problems – but the former police chief says the department took it in stride.
In the midst of the street crime problem, Young put a plan in motion not only to clean up the streets, but to ensure his work would continue after he was gone, and the first step in that plan was to bring in Zapotichny.
Zapotichny had 30 years experience working in various RCMP detachments across the province. In 1998, he was the officer in charge of the Coquitlam detachment when Young approached him about a deputy position with the New Westminster Police Department.
“It was timing, in terms of coming over to the city,” Zapotichny says. “In terms of size and moving from RCMP to an independent municipal police force was a great transition from my perspective.”
With 30 years of policing under his belt, Zapotichny says he intended to stay only five years in New West and retire after 35 years of work, but that didn’t happen.
Together Young and Zapotichny began creating a succession plan for the municipal department, something they say hadn’t existed in a very long time.
Enter Dave Jones.
The Coquitlam native joined the New Westminster Police Department as a reserve in 1982 and was officially hired as a constable in 1986.
For Young and Zapotichny, Jones was the answer to the long-awaited succession plan.
“Peter (Young) set a tone for me and what was good was that we were on the same set of tracks,” Zapotichny says. “That was how we brought Dave along.”
From 1998 to 2000 the three men worked together on many projects in an attempt to clean up the city. By this time, panhandling and street crime was exploding downtown; add an increase in drug trafficking, gang violence and several witnesses under the protection of the department, and the challenges seem endless.
But with added challenges came some fresh ideas from the new top cops in the department.
“We were just working forward with new plans,” Young remembers.
In order to address the street crime problem, Young cut the corporal rank, took a handful of officers out of supervisor roles and put them back out on the streets.
“We were starting to do well and then we got inundated with the Hondurans and we had the witness protection things,” he says. “And everyone chipped in.”
Jones remembers the late ‘90s as a hectic time for the department. He was the lead officer for the street crime unit and worked on the front lines downtown dealing with panhandlers and Honduran drug traffickers.
The department also handled two high profile gang slayings while Young was chief.
In September 1998, the body of Derek Shankar, a known gang associate of Bindy Johal, was found under the Queensborough Bridge. Two months later another associate of Johal, Roman (Danny) Mann was found murdered in New Westminster.
But looking back now, Jones says Young made the decisions that were necessary and promoting Zapotichny to chief after Young left was a natural progression that benefited the department and ultimately, the city.
“He (Young) had to make the right decisions to set the organization on track and then Lorne (Zapotichny) coming in was a continuation of that,” Jones adds. “Also making sure there was, after the tough decisions, there is a softer side to it.”
In 2000, Young retired and returned to Ontario when his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. Zapotichny took over the chief’s post and, despite what he had planned, ended up staying in the position for 11 years.
“I was going to do five years because 35 (years) was sort of my goal in terms of policing and retirement. I couldn’t do it at 35, couldn’t do it at 40. They couldn’t kick me out the door!” Zapotichny laughs.
Despite this, Zapotichny eventually handed the reins over to Jones in 2011.
“The jury is still out on whether that was a good choice or not,” Jones jokes.
