After more than three decades with the New Westminster Police, Chief Const. Dave Jones is getting ready to start a new job on Monday with the Transit Police.
But long before he was chief, Jones was just a kid from Coquitlam hanging out in New Westminster.
NEW WEST CONNECTION
Jones’s grandparents lived in New West, and he spent a lot of time in the city.
He enrolled at Douglas College and even had his first practicum with the New Westminster Police. It was just supposed to be a week with the crime-prevention team, but, when the CUPE workers went on strike, Jones was shuffled to the officers and spent the week going on ride-alongs.
“I got to know a bunch of the members during that time, and then an inspector said, ‘Why don’t you apply to be a reserve officer?’”
He knew he wanted to be a police officer, so why not?
In 1982, Jones was accepted into the New Westminster Police Department’s reserve program. He spent four years as a reserve, all the while going to school and working at Oakalla prison.
In 1986, he was accepted into the ranks of the New Westminster Police Department.
CHANGES
New Westminster in the ’80s and ’90s wasn’t the New Westminster most people know today, according to Jones.
“We had more bar seats than just about anywhere in the province,” he said. “The city was just completely different.”
In 1987, New Westminster had 13,300 bar seats – one for every three residents – compared to 11,117 today, about one seat for every six residents, and the bar and club culture fueled a lot of crime, according to Jones.
When he started with the department, the majority of calls for service were for people-on-people crimes and mischief. Violent crime, including assault, homicide and robbery, increased 27.5 per cent from 1983 to 1984, and by 1986 the police department was scrambling to get a handle on the problem.
Of particular concern was the increased crime around the newly opened SkyTrain stations downtown. Theft, harassment and drug trafficking around the stations was commonplace, and many people blamed the train itself for making it easier for criminals to move around the region.
Jones said it quickly picked up the nickname “crime train.”
Initially, the train terminated in New Westminster, turning the city into a pinch point within the Lower Mainland.
In an effort to push back against rising crime in the city, the police department started a hiring blitz, and by 1989, the force was hiring officers by the handful.
Jones, meanwhile, was rising through the ranks.
He moved from constable to corporal and, in the 1990s, he took on a staff sergeant position just as the crime wave was ramping up.
“I was put in as a staff sergeant to run this group, and, of course, that became one of the more high-profile adventures of our life,” he chuckled.
He wasn’t kidding.
With gangs and drug dealers flooding New Westminster, Jones became the public face of the department’s crack down on drug trafficking in the ’90s, and it was one of the highlights of his career.
“It was such a great team effort,” he said.
“We weren’t just enforcing, we were working with other agencies, we were working with the community, we were working with other police agencies; we were working with the justices and the courts and everyone.”
By the late ’90s, when the department had all but eliminated the rampant drug dealing and street crime from the community, a competition opened up at the department for an inspector’s position.
Jones, who by now had experience working major crimes, drug enforcement and special operations, put his name in the race. He got the job and was officially promoted to inspector in 2000, 14 years into his career.
MANAGEMENT TRACK
Jones never set out to be police chief.
He just wanted to be a cop, help people and serve his community – the usual stuff.
But time and time again, fate (or whatever you want to call it) intervened. It’s as if he “stepped into the right moment at the right time” over and over and over again, he told the Record.
“I can never be in the lottery line up and pick the lottery number or get the quick pick at the right time,” he laughed.
He spent nine years as the department’s inspector in charge of the patrol division and the support services division.
In 2009, he became the deputy chief constable, serving under Chief Const. Lorne Zapotichny. Two years later, Zapotichny retired and Jones succeeded him as the department’s new chief constable.
And his time as chief has been exciting, too.
He and his management team have charted a new path for the department, one that’s less about enforcement and more about providing a social service.
The creation of a mental health unit is one example of the changes happening at the department. The unit was created to help officers and equip them with the tools necessary to handle calls involving people with mental health problems, he said.
The idea for the new unit wasn’t his, but Jones said that part of being a good chief is stepping back and allowing the members to take the lead when they’ve got something to contribute.
After such a long and storied career, Jones only has one regret – he wishes he hadn’t gone into management so quickly.
This year marks his 19th year in management; that’s a lot, he laughed.
THE NEXT CHAPTER
When his sons became New Westminster police officers, Jones knew his time was drawing to a close. There haven’t been any allegations of favouritism, he said, but that’s not to say someone won’t say something eventually.
With his contract up for renewal in the fall, it just felt like the right time to go, Jones said.
Then the chief officer position came up at the Metro Vancouver Transit Police.
Jones admitted he wakes up in a panic sometimes, wondering what the heck he’s done – why he didn’t just retire or serve another term as chief in New Westminster.
Jones’ last day with the department is March 31. (Deputy Chief Dave Jansen will take over as interim chief on April 1.)
Thinking back to his first day, Jones said there’s a lot about his career, the department, even the city, that he could never have foreseen.
“It’s funny. I look back and some of it’s still the same and some of it is completely different and it’s hard to imagine when you look back that this is what it would have become, but it just goes to show you as to what is possible, what is capable.”
