Editor:
Re: New West police need new approach, not more money, Record letters
The author suggests that the New Westminster Police Department should, "Get out on the street, be nice and clean up the reputation a bit," but simply encountering police officers can be a painful and difficult experience for members of marginalized communities which have a history of negative police interactions. It doesn't matter if the officers are unarmed and unarmoured; police represent the violence of a system with prejudice.
It was also suggested that "the old-style colonialistic approach to policing is dull and boring." Has the author considered that dull and boring isn't necessarily a negative?
Many things about municipal operations are dull and boring. I certainly wouldn't want garbage disposal or sewage treatment to be exciting. Nor should I want policing to be thrilling and eventful; optimally, there should be no cause to hear about policing at all, with nothing to police or report on.
The last thing I want is for policing in New West to be anything but boring.
The author commented that they were impressed with Coun. Nadine Nakagawa's "forward thinking" regarding no budget increase for policing: “I think that this work is crucial,” she said. “I guess it sounds perhaps like I am arguing two sides here. This work is crucial, and we want to get it right.”
To get it right, Nakagawa said the external consultants will be needed to do work on behalf of the police department.
“I suppose I am asking for savings within the police force,” she said before putting forward her motion.
Nakagawa recognized that the work the NWPD is doing is crucial, and that it's imperative that this work is done well, and that “additional” external consultation is needed, but the councillor is unwilling to support a motion to pay for that additional consultation.
“This is not an attack on individual police officers,” she said. “This is an attack on systems that are not serving us and are not serving the marginalized in our community. … The fact is we need a different model, and this is the way to a different model.”
“It’s not about whether the work that is being done currently is good or not. It’s that this needs to change,” she said. “If we continue to fund these kinds of institutions, even at marginal increases, it’s still taking money that should go elsewhere and it doesn’t allow or encourage any kind of significant change or new ways of thinking.”
I happen to agree with Coun. Chinu Das, who stated: “I completely understand where the intentions are coming from; this is about making systemic change. I would be for it if I knew where we were going to make that change toward,” she said. “I don’t see any plan in place … apart from reducing the budget.”
So here's a five-point plan:
1. Increase the budget to pay for consultation from stakeholders in marginalized communities that experience greater police interactions. We should pay people for the work they do.
2. Make funding substance abuse programs, shelters, and family aid programs, and etc. part of the policing budget. This will force a consideration of balance between force and aid under the terms of receiving budget dollars. Policing should always be considered within the lens of harm reduction and aid; councillors should be considering whether a dollar should help pay for another police officer or another social worker.
3. Have (and pay for) stakeholders in high-risk and high-police-interaction communities report to city council on a regular basis regarding the impact of policing upon their communities.
4. We need integrated training between police, EMTs, social workers, and so on. At the moment, these services do not engage in integrated training, and so ambulances, police cars, fire trucks and so on show up at emergency calls and react in a largely ad-hoc manner. They should be working together as best as possible, but we do not train them to do so.
5. Instruct the NWPD to no longer enforce laws which are unlikely to carry a prison sentence upon conviction.
Dan Leslie, New Westminster
