policing

Getting into policing as an occupation, you need to kind of know where they came from, right? We've talked about that before, earlier on in the class, we talked about sort of the premise of policing, the premise of policing in Canada, based on, roots from England, United States. Roots are slightly similar, but slightly different, all kind of coming from different, but similar backgrounds. When it comes to historical trends of the cops that typically ended up becoming… or individuals that typically became police officers, some of the earlier ones were, not necessarily the best of the best. But, historically speaking, police officers were recruited, if they weren't required to do police service, like night watch service, they were typically recruited from a military background. They were typically working-class men, so blue-collar men. And less educated. In fact, the idea of women in policing is a relatively modern phenomenon. In comparison to, other things. That's relatively new, but historically speaking, less educated military background, working class men, and for the most part, salaries for policing were relatively suppressed. I want to say repressed, that's the wrong word. Suppressed in the sense that Typically, police office policing didn't get you a good salary, but it offered security and respect. You'll notice that this is a major change in recruitment when the recruiters come. You'll see that not only will they indicate that you can make a decent living, you can pay your bills and have a home and that sort of stuff. Maybe not in Vancouver, but you'd be able to have a home and live comfortably. They'll often talk about their pensions. They'll usually say they have a defined benefit… geez, I don't remember their exact pension programs, but they'll sell it to you as Financially speaking, this is a good idea to be a police officer, and I would have to say, yes, there's worse jobs that you could have, and most people with a liberal arts degree, you know, 4 years of university experience, it's not common for them to start in a job that pays $80, $90K a year. It's possible. But certainly policing, yeah, it is. They've also, in terms of the recruitment piece, they've not just sort of pitched it as a job, like, you know, a part-time job working as I don't know, barista at Starbucks, you're there for a couple years, then you're off. No, they really promote it as policing should be considered a career, a profession, not just something that you kind of try. And, you know, if you don't like Starbucks, you move on to Tim Hortons. If you don't like Tim Hortons, you move on to, geez, I don't know, another cafe. So that's kind of how they've shifted gears. From just a job that doesn't pay all that well, to a profession that does pay well. I've also talked about, lack of diversity in the past, I've mentioned this on several occasions, and some folks have put this in their term papers. Where we've reached sort of a plateau in terms of representation of excuse me, groups of individuals in policing. Women, is, you know, we've kind of flatlined around 20-25% in this country. In the United States, it's 10-15%. police officers or women. Recall the 3030 initiative I've mentioned before, where there is an active effort to get more women in policing, more specifically, 30% of women by 2030. If you mention that to groups that actually do this, they'll say, oh, no, no, no, we're not doing the 30-30 initiative anymore, we're changing it. Because we're recognizing that getting 30% by 2030 is what? 4 years away. It's a lofty goal, it's probably not going to be there, but it's a good idea to have it, just the premise of it. Don't worry about if it's called something different now. Any efforts to have a benchmark and a point? To aim towards, even if you're going to fail, is admirable, because to not have any effort whatsoever means that it's probably not on anyone's radar, and there's really nothing that's keeping anyone, held accountable. Canadian police services, expanded rapidly in the 1960s and the 1970s. This is in parallel to the expansion of baby boomers in communities. Which also was in line with crime spikes in major urban settings, so… You have lots of cops coming on board in the 60s and 70s, but you have an aging… a population that had aged into the era. where they're likely to commit crimes. So you're trying to match that trend, though. We've got young individuals in their 20s and 30s, they're not committing crimes, we're gonna need more cops to respond to that. In, you know, again, for many years. I would say, arguably till recently, the recruitment approach has been pretty much the same. going to, you know, looking for men, looking for white men, looking for athletic men, as potential recruits. You'll hear of stories of, you know, this was the individual that was the first female that worked in the RCMP. This is the first, Indigenous male or Indigenous female that's worked in policing in the RCMP. These people are still probably around. I don't have their exact names and when they started and when they didn't. But this is not stuff that happened 200 years ago, right? This is stuff that's happened within at least my generation. And we've had some of these challenges, for hundreds of years, and yet it's only recently where we've made an effort to kind of get a better representation of the community in the police service. Now, I get that it's not always as easy as, you know, said, but that should be the ultimate goal, right? Make your cop shop look like the community that it serves. Will it go away with all misconduct and any problems police services have? No. There is no such thing as a silver bullet, but it will help get us closer to that, kind of like the 30-30 initiative, right? It's admirable to have that as a goal. So, again, history of working class males, lack of minorities, lack of women, same issue that we have today. Another part that is a historical trend, and you might actually be a student in the class that has this, I typically get this, I have, the family tradition. So, your parent, or parents, or an uncle, or an aunt, or cousin, or a brother, is… might be a cop. And that typically means that family tradition means that there's a good chance that you'll get exposed to this. You've grown up around your mom or dad, or aunt or uncle, or whatever, stepdad, stepmom. You've grown around the culture of policing. You've heard the dinner table stories. You've been exposed to shift work, you know, dad's working nights, dads working, you know, evenings. You've heard radio cracklings, you've heard uniformed officers come by the door, you've met other police officers. The idea of being a police officer, that's not your job as a 6-year-old boy or 6-year-old girl, but you know about it, right? You know that's what they do, your parent or parents do for a living. In that sense, policing is familiar to you, right? And it's attainable. In some cases, it's quite the opposite, right? Mom or dad are a police officer, and they absolutely want you to stay as far away as fucking possible from policing. But you're at least familiar with it. You have an idea of what you might be getting into, which means that there are quite a few families of police officers that exist, generations. Grandpa, son, and grandson, or daughter, whatever the case may be, are all kind of working in, leasing. Another part of this is, parents can role model for you. So, you've seen parents help victims You've seen them help serve their community, you've seen them help individuals in crises, you know, they got a quick call, and they had to run away, and maybe you were, you know, heard about it afterwards, maybe you saw some of it, I don't know. You saw your family member being a police officer, and that can often be a powerful impact on you. Pride in service is another kind of that role modeling aspect. You can pass that down alongside, to your family, the ideas of public service, doing, service for your community, being disciplined, and that sort of stuff. And kind of the other family tradition part, you kind of have an inside edge, so to speak. I'm not saying you get hired automatically because, you know, your dad or your mom is a cop. But they'll be able to tell you that… a little bit more about the hiring process, the internal culture, what you should say in an interview. I've mentioned a couple of that stuff before. Recruiters will mention a couple of that, too. What you really want to know is, what's it really like, right? I'll only tell you certain things that I think you want to hear, and recruiters will definitely tell you things that you want to hear. you want to talk to somebody who can give you the real deal, and tell you how it really is. And a family member certainly, would. They'd help you with the hiring process, as I said, in interviews, fitness, prep, academ… academy expectations. And understanding the emotional and physical toll that the job has on you, right? Asking an NHL hockey player, what's it like to play in the NHL? And they'll tell you the highs and the lows, and kind of the good and the bad. That's really what you want, and In some cases, family members are very open to that. Other cases, as I said, they keep their kids as far away from being cops as possible. But you have that inside edge. If you have an individual in your family that is a police officer and you're interested in it. Talk to them. You know, offer to buy them a coffee or a beer, I know I probably shouldn't say that, but that you're going to get so much out of that, if you can get the honest views from them on what's it like to be a cop? Recruiters will give you kind of… they're on behalf of that agency, right? They're trying to sell you. I don't know if a family member would be trying to sell you. You want that honest viewpoint, and that's not always easy to get. So, this is the most recent statistics I could find on diversity in policing. This is an example from the RCMP. As I've mentioned before, this is, minority, ethnic minority, visible minority, women. Their numbers are low in policing, and they fluctuate. And, the chart here in front of you is a longitudinal data set from the RCMP. And this is regular member representation. They have more data out there. Sorry, I've just got a… I've got a cough drop there and a cup of tea. Just give me a sec. Can't imagine you listening to this and hearing me drink tea and suck on a cough drop out. Anyways, what they have produced here is just for regular members, so these are actual police officers. They also produce statistics for civilians and some other positions as well, but what they've done here is they've broken it down in terms of the percentage of representation for sworn members. When I say sworn members, I mean cops. And what percentage of the service is represented by persons with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, and members of visible minorities? So, by and large, persons with disabilities is the lowest of the diversity statistics, and it is trending downward. That's that very bottom. blue or purple line. You have to forgive me, I'm colorblind, so I don't know what color that is, but it's really low, right? It's in 2014 is when they started collecting the data. It was around 2.5%, and they've just continued to fall further and further down the line. One thing about disabilities in policing, so long as you can meet the minimum requirements for the job with reasonable accommodation, you can be a cop. However, that is likely to eliminate… certain disabilities are likely to eliminate you from being able to do the job. So, like, being in a wheelchair, And not being able to meet the vision requirements, which is… color blindness is actually one. Or, or having visual impairment, like, you know, say, total blindness. yes, you have a disability, but that is something that they cannot accommodate for, given the nature of the work. So there are people that have disabilities that work in policing, the numbers are going down, there's not very many to begin with, but you should be aware that this is something… they are representatives of the community too, right? And they deserve at least a chance to get into policing. And the trend is not going in the good direction, in my opinion. I don't know if two and a half is good. I don't know if two and a half seems low, but to say that it was better in 2014 than it is in 2024, definitely is not good. Another pattern in there that you should be aware of is Indigenous peoples, you know, their patterns are largely flatlined. They're also decreasing, too. in terms of the number of sworn police officers that are Indigenous, we're doing pretty good between 2014… 2011 and 2018. Then it just starts to go down. And I don't have an answer for you in terms of why that is. I can just tell you that, you need to… we need to do better. I guess where there's a positive, outcome in terms of recent findings is the members of visible minorities, they have been steadily increasing. In 2011, it was around 8% of all sworn members, just your everyday rink. Remember, cops. You know, they started around 8%, now we're up to about 14%. So that is sort of a feather in the cap, so to speak, for the RCMP, that they are doing Well, again, I don't know if 8% is good, or if 14% is good, I just know that in terms of trends, it's good. Or… or better than the other two, I guess. Which, I don't know if that's a good thing to mention, but they're trending in the right direction. Another part that you should know, is if you've got problems at the beginning stages of recruitment and getting people into the workplace, it's gonna rear its ugly head further on down the line in, that level of employment. So problems in recruitment lead to further problems in upper levels of policing. So, if you don't have representative groups of recruits, you're never going to get representative groups in upper administrative positions, chiefs of police, for example, or in the case of The RCMP, they use different terminology, but they call them, you know, inspector, superintendent, chief superintendent, commissioners. Every from an inspector up, they wear white shirts. White shirts. There, you could consider those to be management. Everyone below that, they're in the blue shirts, or they're considered non-management. And there's a couple of things I want you to know about this table, is… Look at special constables. So these are individuals that are not sworn police officers, but they provide certain special services. So, they would be, like, the… kind of like a hybrid between a security guard and a police officer. They have some arrest capabilities, but they do not carry firearms, they're often paid less, etc, etc. Look at the, percentage of Indigenous, special constables as well as persons with disabilities, right? You're looking at roughly 5% of all special constables are, persons with disability, and 10% are that in, with Indigenous peoples. That's great. If you just looked at that in and of itself, you'd be like, that's great. As you move from left to right, though, you see that that… those percentages start to drop off. I mean, obviously, for some… for Indigenous, it seems to flatline along the way, but going from special constable to constable, there is a gap. Right? So it's… it's one thing to say that we have representation in policing, yes, that's important. But when you start to look at more higher-up positions, which ultimately are more highly compensated, you're getting paid more, there's a bit of a disconnect. Again, kind of the good story of all this is members of visible minorities, their percentage of positions that are in frontline, so constable positions, and then kind of moving all the way up to commissioners and superintendents, their numbers are getting higher. And that is a good sign to see, that the individuals that are wearing the white shirts, the management, are more likely to be members of visible minority groups. So kind of a good story, and then with every one good story, there's a… there's something bad that's going on. I couldn't possibly be completely positive. I wouldn't be doing my job. I have to always have a little bit of negative in there. So, moving on to the working personality of police officers, this is the theory, or the idea that there's a set of attitudinal and behavioral attributes of cops. Think of this as a lens which affects the way police officers behave, and perceive specific situations. Think of it like sunglasses. Working police officers, the personalities, so to speak, is a pair of sunglasses they put on, and they see the world if you subscribe to this, they would see the world differently than if you didn't have these sunglasses on. This personality is created and fostered Sorry, it's created in recruitment training, so it's the academy, and it is fostered in the in-service training, so the training you get before you become a police officer, and then perpetuated as you move from recruit to cadet. to full… a fully sworn police officer. This idea that police officers are distinct from members of the general population is quite pervasive in policing. The idea that police officers need to be preoccupied with danger, that there's always something bad going to happen, that they need to be excessively suspicious of individuals. And that they need to protect one another. So this is the practice of the Code of Silence, or the Blue Wall of Silence, that this is your job as a police officer is to protect your fellow officers. In the us versus them mentality, in order to kind of… protect the organization and protect your colleagues. If you've played on a sporting team. Right? If you play football, you play hockey, you've done gymnastics in a team setting. Ultimate Frisbee, or soccer, or something like that, you know what I'm talking about. When you're part of a team. you're… you'll do things to ensure that the team survives, so to speak. Maybe not to the point of, like, you know, covering up bad things, but you certainly are, There is one, a collection of individuals that make up a team. When it comes to the blue wall of silence, it can get pretty extreme, where, you know, the idea that you must protect your fellow police officers by remaining silent on specific issues or work together to ensure the continued survival of the team is very much a real thing. Hypervigilance is another one, so this is the idea of constantly being aroused, paying attention to the detail in the environment. you have interpreted relatively innocuous situations as potentially threatening or dangerous. Think of it, you know, you notice somebody looking at you, and you think, oh, they're gonna harm me. You may have misinterpreted that entirely, where someone just glanced at you because they were walking by you. But if you've got that sort of hypervigilance, you've always got the hairs up on your neck, you're ready to go at any point in time, that can lead you to make conclusions of certain situations that might not necessarily lead that conclusion to. An everyday individual. So there's some positive features about that, and think again of this sort of team environment. Of this, working personality first. you've got a team on your back, right? You've got that in-group solidarity. Someone has your back, and you got their back. That's always nice to have. That can be… that can be protective, that can give you an outlet to, talk to somebody, it can be a point of support, and that can be very useful for you. You're not in this by yourself. Of course, the side effect to that is you, as a member of this team. Ultimately, you're isolating yourselves from other members of the community. You alienate yourself from the public, and in some cases, management. Remember I said white shirts and blue shirts? You know, unionized members, don't always get along with management, and it becomes an us versus them. This is within the organization, and it can be incredibly problematic. Another negative feature is that you can be very resistant to change. Unethical behavior, bias, and culture. This can really hinder progressive policing, changing the way cops do business. And, this could be incredibly problematic going forward. So, the dangers of police work. This is, Dr. Jerry Radcliffe from Temple University. He was at Temple University, he's moved on from that. I think he's still in the, in the Pennsylvania area, sorry, but he no longer works at Temple. I never ask you that in a quiz, don't worry about it. In his work, he talks, maybe in a pragmatic sense, because he was a former police officer from London. He talks about the dangers associated with policing, and the need to really put that into context. Of time and other professions. So, what he does by that is he provides, it's called evidence-based policing. I may have written that in a couple of your term paper feedback, when I provided you the feedback. Evidence-based policing is simply, don't just tell me something because it sounds sexy or interesting or is topical. Show me the data that supports such a claim. And, Jerry's got a couple of things. The data on the left is a source of police officer deaths relative to time. So as time has changed, you know, between the 1880s to, let's say, now. He looked at, relative rates of firearm… firearm-related deaths over time. And you can see that your rate of risk of line-of-duty deaths is not consistent, at least in the United States, and I would say the same in Canada as well. What you have is, Policing was incredibly risky in terms of line-of-duty deaths, for two parts sometimes. During the prohibition era, again, in the U.S, this was a policy that resulted in, not allowing people to drink alcohol. And by doing that, they had a high rate of police officer death. Sorry, not even rate counts, these are counts of police officer deaths. Within that time frame. Then, well, things kind of went down after Prohibition was abolished, but then it went back up in the 1970s. You see that war on drugs. has creeped back up. Prohibition, war on drugs, two policy decisions that had a dramatic and probably statistically significant impact on your likelihood of dying in the line of duty. And since the 1970s, the rates… counts, and even the rates, have decreased considerably. So the idea that, you know, policing is… is… is likely to… kill you if you're a police officer? No, not really, but it depends on the, kind of, the flavor of that government at the time, right? Are they creating a situation where You're highly likely to be exposed to violent interactions. One of the main reasons why, after the 1970s, and it's not written on here, but it's important to know. That Y line of duty deaths had decreased. Was because we started creating policies that required officers to wear body armor. So, if you require people to wear body armor, you're less likely… they're less likely to die in the line of duty. More and more cops that wear… that's not to say they won't get shot, they won't get stabbed, they won't get anything like that. But they were likely to survive, From their injuries, should they have any. On the right-hand side, So that's the time part, right? On the right-hand side is looking at policing, In terms of line of duty deaths. relative to other lines of work. So… Policing has a much lower rate of work-related fatalities than other occupations, right? We think, well, cops wear guns, they're dealing with bad guys. Yeah, but they get training on how to do that. they wear body armor, and not everything they do is always, you know, guns ablazing, right? And going in and shooting at bad guys. That's the media for you, pushing that narrative. That's not to say that they don't do it, but at the same time, exposure rates that lead to death are much lower than other lines of work. People that work in mining, people that work in fishing, people that work in construction. If you know anyone that works in Fort McMurray or is a fisherman, fisher person, or construction, people fall and die all the time in construction. those are much more dangerous occupations in terms of exposure to death than, policing. Again, part of it is because policing isn't as dangerous as you might have thought. You have body armor, you have training, you have a team, and even within that, the individuals that are more likely to die in the line of duty, there's a pattern within police officers, right? Think of those older officers who are in management, who wear white shirts. They're not likely to die in the line of duty, because they're not working in the public. It's typically those who are exalted, those who are exposed to more violence are younger police officers. They tend to typically have less experience. But their rate of exposure to the public in those types of scenarios is increased. So not all cops are even exposed at the same rate. To line of duty deaths and violence more broadly. So, you might find it interesting, know that, I said policing isn't as dangerous as you might think. Obviously, if you ask a cop, they'll tell you that their work is the most dangerous in the world, and blah blah blah. That's just not true. It is dangerous, it is violent, but in comparison to other people, in comparison to other points in time, things have gotten better. Doesn't mean it's not there at all. When it comes to, how police officers are injured, or specifically where they're injured. It really, varies considerably. You have arguably the most common is musculoskeletal injuries. These range considerably. These are things like sprains, strains, and muscle, other muscle pains. typically happens in your upper body. Typically, you get injured in your wrists, your torso, or your back, so if you're wanting to get into policing now as a career. and you've already got a bad back, I can almost guarantee that copying is not going to help. Y'all wear huge vests, you wear the belts with all the gear on it, you know, tens and tens of pounds… dozens of pounds of weight on you. You're in and out of a cop car all day long, you're reaching over, you're typing on a keyboard. That is going to injure you over time. In a lot of cases, it's because of arrests, you're interacting with an assailant. they're not complying to you, but you, you know, people get injured all the time. They get injured in training, they get injured, putting on their equipment, they get injured getting out of their car. And the one that you probably would agree with, but don't always… we don't always see, is cops get into accidents all the time, right? They are trained. on how to take cars out, and do maneuvers, and they get into accidents regularly. Their cars get banged up, and they're in the cars when they get banged up. So the thought that they could also be injured should compute, but for a lot of people, they're like, well. That's just the nature of the business. No, they get into a lot of traffic accidents, they respond to a lot. And in some cases, that's gonna lead to injuries for them as well. When it comes to what's likely to put you at a higher risk, obviously higher body mass index, being more overweight, is likely to lead to that. not having enough training on how to handle things accordingly, or knowing your limits in terms of how much weight you can or cannot lift, can lead to that as well. And as I said to you before, body armor, right? Body armor, your tools, knowing how to use them, knowing your limits. If you can manage that, you're likely to reduce risks of injuries, but… Chances are you're gonna get… you're gonna get punched, you're gonna get kicked, you're gonna get spit on, you're gonna twist something. Screw up your knees, screw up your back. It's a very physically demanding job, at least for… those on the front lines, right? As you move up and you have less exposure to day-to-day policing, traditional day-to-day policing. In theory, your rate of exposure to injuries and things like that are going to decrease, but you're also older, so you're not as in shape as you were when you were in your early 20s. You should know this as well. So, in 1998, I'll never ask you the date, The Government of Canada officially proclaimed the last Sunday of September of every year as Police and Peace Officers National Memorial Day. It is an annual opportunity for government to express their appreciation, government and unions, and police services as well, I should say. To express the appreciation and dedication of police officers, who lost their lives in the line of duty, and offer condolences to the surviving members and those who gave their lives during service, of their community, so it's not really well advertised, and it's kind of buried behind the Parliament building, which is currently under construction. I was there last summer. Actually didn't go around to it, because it was totally closed off, but it is there. I assume once all their renovations are done, and they've done, spent, I don't know, 40 years on fixing up an old house. that that will be easily accessible, but it's right along the river there, it overlooks it, it's beautiful, and so at the end of September and… Every year, they have a bit of a ceremony, and there's actually a physical representation of a police officer memorial in Ottawa. There's also one in Saskatchewan, too, though I do not believe that there's actually a physical memorial, because those are expensive. But they do the same thing at the Sunday, September 28th, they have sort of the end of the September. They have a parade and a bit of a ceremony at the legislature building, so if you're interested in policing, if you're interested in witnessing this as a member of the public, obviously this, flyer that I have here on the left-hand side. It's… it's from 2025, so it's already… the data's already passed, but they will… The Saskatchewan Federation of Police Officers is a police union for the province, which individual cop shops will have their own, chapters. Sort of the provincial, group will put this on every year, and you can kind of see from the images there, there's cops standing in front of the ledge. You've got our RCMP members, you've got members from RPS, Saskatoon, PA, Esteban, Weyburn, all over the… all over the province will come down. And they'll do a little, service, I think there's a bit of a parade, too, as well, so if you're looking for exercise… No, I'm kidding. At the end of September, just be aware that this is… this actually does happen, here as well. So that's sort of the physical stuff, right? You, you know, you can have physical injuries, you can have line of duty deaths. These are arguably, in some cases, very serious, and I'm not trying to downplay them. But in terms of victimization, you are more likely to be verbally victimized. than physically victimized. So this is a study I did with the CPA, which is the Canadian Police Association. This is the National Police Union. I did it when I worked out of the Justice Institute of British Columbia. A colleague of mine from Simon Fraser and another colleague of mine from Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. And so we sent out a survey to all… members of unions of Canadian Police… Police Services of Canada union members, so these are frontline members. And we asked them a couple of questions, and one of the things we asked them was, you know, within the last year. prior to completing the survey, how often were you verbally victimized? Two of every three participants indicated that they had been verbally victimized. Within the past year. So, I mention this to you because if you've never had somebody call you a bad name, because they're having a bad day, or they don't like you, and you're uncomfortable with this, this is like… this is a Tuesday for being a cop, right? You have to come to terms with, this is going to happen. That doesn't make it right, I'm not saying that it's okay, but this is absolutely going to be, common. We also ask people daily exposure. So, 16, so let's say 16 out of 100 of every police officer that filled out this survey said they get verbally abused. Daily. So, it's one thing to be called an asshole once a week, it's another thing to be called at every single time you work. We also asked them a few follow-up questions, kind of related to that. The other types of, exposure that they could get on a daily basis was threats and intimidation, harassment, sexual harassment, all within the last month, 12 months, so that was more of a recency effect, right? We're not looking at, did somebody call you a bad name 14 years ago? No, this is like… Within the last 12 months. Was it relatively recent? I also wanted to provide you a couple of quotes. I know that one arrow is sort of covering it up there. But… to say that you've been insulted, to say that you've been verbally victimized is one thing. Another is to give you an example of that. As you can see here, racial slurs, homophobic language. Threats to cause death and harm to my family. Online harassment. posted a picture of their children that they had found. Another one is… In the workplace, right? Job security is threatened by one of your colleagues. Last one there, as an officer of a Middle Eastern background, I was called a terrorist and told to leave the country. So imagine the worst that you could possibly come up with, and just think, there's probably something much worse out there. And it becomes very personal, right? People… people maybe don't like the concept of the police more generally, but they can make their targeted verbal abuse to you very specific, and you will get exposed to that. And I'm not saying it's okay, I'm just trying to tell you that this is what's going to likely happen. Just given how common it was, I was blown away when I got… when there was, like, 66% of all respondents said that they were verbally abused in the past 12 months. Maybe I didn't… maybe I was just living under a rock, right? And I didn't think, oh, it can't be that bad. And then I started reading through the, quotes, and these are just four. I mean, we had hundreds of them. These are the ones that are, I can post for you that don't include profanity. Oh, I swear all the time, so I guess I could have done that, but… Giving you an idea of, and this was a report… a report that I did, with those four organizations, CPA, JI, SFU. and Thompson Rivers. I did another study, which hopefully will get published soon, that just looked at British Columbia. And that one, I was just focusing on physical assaults, and that's where this came from. If you just focus on the physical stuff, you're missing the… Verbal. And it can be quite, prof… profound. Common sources of, stress and policing. This is sort of the three main areas. The first one is the police role and mandate. you know, you can have stress because you must enforce laws, even if unpopular. As a police officer, you know, used to be, you had to enforce marijuana laws and cannabis laws, right? Where it's just a couple kids smoking weed, what's the big deal? Well. As a police officer, you can't just not do that. You have to enforce the law. Now, it's a little bit more flexible, but, you know. Just because something is on the books, you can't pick and choose. As a police officer, you have to enforce everything. Obviously you have some discretion in the matter, but, for the most part, you don't really have a say in that matter. You could be tossed into the midst of chaos by politicians. You see this all the time in the U.S. Where a decision will be made by the state or the federal government, and police officers have to go and do that. This can result in… if a policy is saying. One thing, as you've seen in the United States recently, you can see certain policing actions as targeting certain groups of individuals. They don't really have a choice, they have to enforce what their bosses are telling them, and that can be a challenge. So, if they're saying, go round up every single person that you think is illegal in the country, and all you've done is talk to people and arrest people that are Black and Hispanic. Yeah, you could probably make a conclusion that that might be a racist policy, but… We target the frontline police officers because they're the ones doing it, and sometimes they do fuck up, don't get me wrong. But there's somebody pushing down on them to do that. And they become… The person that we see as a representative of that. And they do screw up. But they're not the only ones to blame, for those policies, so that can be a point of stress. The criminal justice system, the increasing demands of paperwork. I don't know, if you have literacy issues, if you don't like to write, not saying you don't have to love to write, but you are going to have to write reports, you're going to have to fill out paperwork. That is the physical aspect of driving around, patrolling, arresting people, problem solving, that sort of stuff, is a major component of policing. But if you hate paperwork, copying is going to be difficult, because you guys have a lot to do. And that can be a challenge. That's just the way the modern criminal justice system demands. It demands that you document everything. Excuse me. Another one there is, you could show up You know, to a situation where there's extreme violence. And that that extreme violence arguably hasn't been dealt with. Earlier on by the criminal justice system, so you've got cases of intimate partner violence, and you continue to go back to the same calls, and nothing seems to change, and guys get arrested, and they get let out, and… he ends up going back, and same story over and over again. That can be a part of, Stress for police officer. the demand for police officers to do quick responses, it can be exhausting, right? Quick decisions. Here, I'm snapping my fingers, you can't see me. That is exhausting, when you're always on the… always having to go, go, go, go, go, go. It's hard for you emotionally. Physically, it's also very hard. And that's just because in places like Regina and Saskatoon. Their cops are so busy. You don't really get much of a chance to breathe. And that can be a point of stress for police officers. And lastly, viewing traumatic incidents. That can take a toll, right? You can lead to post-traumatic stress injuries. Which is more broad than post-traumatic stress disorder. But… You know, you're getting exposed to trauma, and the stuff that doesn't show up. In the news, the nasty stuff, you will see. Maybe not even see, like, something really gross, like, I don't know. A deceased infant. you'll see things that maybe aren't really gross or crude. You'll just see histories of things, or your mind will take it somewhere, and that can sometimes be difficult as well. Third one there is the community. So this is where representatives of the community are… create stress and policing, because they have unrealistic expectations, right? They want cops to clean up parts of the town that are not really nice. They want to make sure there's no homeless people walking around downtown Regina or downtown Calgary, and just take care of it. I don't want to see that shit more. That's not realistic, and it's arguably not the police… it's not their job to do that. But you have… you know, you're asking them to do that. Another one that can be problematic in terms of the community and a source of stress is the media. They don't necessarily promote good stories of copying. It's… if you ever see them on just bins. or, you know, CBC News. It's usually, you know, something bad has happened. Rarely is it positive stories. So, if you think of it, that's where you get all your information about policing from. It's a very skewed view of what policing is. Another one can be, challenging environments, so you have remote rural environments, can be extremely challenging for police officers. Other things, too, there, which is going to seem more obvious, is language barriers, right? If you don't speak, the language that is being spoke in that pocket of the community. Mandarin, for example. That can be a stress point for police officers, because they're not able to communicate effectively to get, you know, what answers they need, or to get information from people. And that can be a real barrier and a point of stress, because what if you don't have anyone on that shift that speaks Mandarin? What are you going to do? You're going to have to problem-solve something. Well, if you've ever had to try to talk to somebody. in another language, you better have your phone out with, Google Translate or something going on, and that's… That's okay for a couple of words, but you're trying to have a complex conversation of a legal investigation of an assault. Yeah, that could create some additional stress. For police officers. The police organization itself can be, a point of stress, so… When you have… This is sort of a big one. Lack of organizational resources, To get the proper amount of people working. creates massive issues. So when you are short-staffed. This increases the workload on the staff that you do have, so you end up burning out the ones you've got. And hiring new people on. You could be bringing them into that nightmare. So to speak. The morale will likely be low, members' mental health will likely be low, and now you've hired two or three people on to help alleviate the pressure. And that might help, and that probably will help. But if it's a systemic issue of low staffing. The chances of them sticking around? are going to be much lower than if the workplace is properly staffed to begin with. So you get so far back in terms of staffing levels, in some cases, it's almost impossible to come back from, right? You're too far behind. And hiring new people is, not going to be enough. You would need to hire a lot of people to get yourself back up to, kind of. Even Steven, And even then, it might not be enough. So, that can be a challenge. Lack of confidence in leadership, you know, police officers can be poached. I mentioned this, may have mentioned this before. You know. They'll talk to other cops from other places, and they'll say, is the grass greener on the other side? And they might say yes, they might say no, and that happens when, if people are looking for work elsewhere, you know, they're just sort of casually saying, hey, how much do you make as a cop in Esteban? Just out of curiosity, but if they're actively searching to go somewhere else or to leave, that is not good, and that's a leadership issue, because it means there's something wrong that's creating problems, and people are likely to want to go. Lastly there, shift work, tired cop syndrome. I do have a video on that, and I'm not gonna show it here live. I'll send you the clip. I'll send you, sort of, the web link to it. That way, this video becomes a bit shorter, but you will have to watch it. Cops are tired, for the most part. Shift work is not great on someone's health, and it can lead to major health problems. So, I'll just kind of skip along here. This is, Dr. Brian Villa. He is a researcher, former police officer, former academic. Used to work out of, I believe Washington State University, I could be wrong on that. Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. And he's done a lot of research on the impact of Lack of sleep and lack of quality sleep on, police officers. If you think you're tired now, as a university student, right? You're pulling all-nighters, you've got two part-time jobs, you're trying to take four classes a semester. That is stressful. That is going to lead to poor sleep, and that's going to lead to poor health outcomes. But arguably. the responsibilities you have, which I'm not saying are not as important. Are less significant than, say, a police officer who's tasked with public safety. Right, and in Brian's video, he talks about the fact that, Tired cops are particularly bad because they have guns and clubs, he says in his clip. Versus just someone who's tired and kind of slogging through. When you have… when you're sick, or sorry, when you're not sleeping well. It has massive impacts on your cardiovascular health. It has massive impacts on your rate of absenteeism. So you're calling in sick more, because you're getting sick more. And if your staff… staffing level was already short-staffed, you just may have made that situation even worse, because the ones that you have, and I believe he says it in his video, it's been about a year since I watched it. You're burning out the cops you already have. And that is not a good situation to be in. It's almost like you're speeding up, going downhill. You're pushing it. I want to say bobsled, but you're speeding it up, and that's not good. The lack of sleep in policing, may also increase stress and depression of police officers. You're already exposed to this sort of stuff. You're now speeding it up because you're not sleeping. I mentioned cardiovascular health, immune system, for sure. And… It's about a 15-minute TED talk. I'd like you to watch it. I'm not going to show it here. But I will include a link to the clip. He's a very well-spoken police officer, and he basically just talks about, The impact of a lack of sleep on police officers, particularly around shift work. So people often ask me, what's the best one to have? Shorter shifts. And not structured in a way, a lot of the way the police services structure their shifting, is better for your health. So many cop shops do 4 on, 4 off, or a combination. 4 days on, 12-hour shifts, 4 days off. Kind of a mix between that. The evidence suggests that that's not the best for people's health. The sweet spot is around 8 to 10 hours in terms of sleep. and a more predictive shifting pattern, but in some cases, cops don't have a choice, right? You have a 24-hour service. And two 12-hour services mean you can occupy one position with two people, right? One person takes the AM shift, one takes the PM shift. If you start breaking it up into 8-hour shifts, you have a lot… you need three. And if you only have enough for 2, there's no way that an organization is going to switch to 8, even if it had a better health impact on, police officers. So, I'll send that to you. It's important you know it. It's important for your health and well-being. Even if you're not wanting to be a cop, it's just important to listen to what he has to say. Effective stress. Stress can lead to occupational stress injuries. These are, physical or mental conditions caused by organizational and operational experiences on the job. So the stress of working… In a workplace where there's not enough cops. Where leadership doesn't really seem to care about you, that's organization, right? And if you work at a shitty part-time job now. What is the shitty part about it? Is it the job itself, where you're, I don't know, flipping burgers at McDonald's? Or is it the crew leader at McDonald's? Is it the organization itself that's creating problems? We often attribute it to the flipping burgers part. Here, I'm flipping burgers, you can't even see me. But one of the major sources of stress, for anyone is your bosses. the administrators. And in some cases, that can be, very pervasive. Occupational stretch can affect an officer, their family, job performance, misconduct. As I said, sorry I've already said there, organization can be more stressful than job, poor leadership, no transparency, lack of support. Sometimes the best thing to do In cases where there's misconduct is… is… yes, you need to address an individual who's done something bad. But in some cases, if that is a cultural thing. Probably the best thing to do would be get rid of the manager, or do something with that as well, rather than just saying, well, it was just a one-time case. It could be something where that has only just become an issue because Nobody in management was paying attention, or nobody in management cared, or what have you. This one here we're gonna try to watch. This is the idea of maladaptive coping, and… It is as simple as it sounds, where you have individuals that have stress. That stress has manifested into injuries, physical injuries, they develop things like cancer, or back injuries, or post-traumatic stress injuries. what we do with that after we have become injured, and there's a good chance you will be injured in one way or another, is how you respond. And if you have work environments that have terrible leadership. Or not great leadership. They're not trying to prevent things from happening. Even if that does exist, you have certainly the possibility of people fixing the problem the way that they want to fix it. And that doesn't always necessarily mean that you're going to have the most, the best response that you could possibly have, and one of the worst ways is, maladaptive coping. So just bury it deep, right? Just forget about it. Put it out of your mind, and pretend that what happened to you didn't happen to you, or what you saw, you didn't see. In some cases, that works, right? Imagine it's like a video game. That's often how they're trained. If you see a dead body, it's just a video game. It's not real. But you know it's real. And by pushing it out of your mind and forgetting it, it's kind of… Oversimplifies how we process trauma. And continual exposure to that You're gonna start to realize that it's not a video game, if you didn't already at the beginning. You become more and more likely to recognize that this is starting to build and can create problems. That's one thing about stress, is it… you never know when it's gonna hit you, or a bad thing is gonna hit you. We typically think, well, it was one incident that really did it. Like, it was a culmination of 20 years of high amounts of stress, or low grades of stress. And for what stresses you out, could be different from what stresses me out. And it's just, it's just not as simple as, smoking cigarettes leads to lung cancer. Being a cop doesn't lead to being post-traumatic stress disorder. But it increases your chances of getting it. In this case here, this is, maladaptive coping through substance use. So the escape of… Or the way to… calm your nerves, so to speak, through the use of substances is a real thing, right? And it is maladaptive in the sense that it is in no way going to help. Going out for a couple beers after a shitty day of work, you know, occasionally, that's good, at least in terms of building camaraderie. If you're doing it every night, if you're doing it, you know. Four or five times a week. and you haven't addressed the underlying issues of what's really hitting you, this is going to create major problems, as you can imagine. new problems that you didn't have before, and now you have those problems too, right? So you've witnessed really bad things, you've got that. And now you're hooked on a drug. Now you've got two things, and chances are that's going to impact your family and friends. So hopefully this will play for you. Don't know if it will, but I'll tell you what I'll do. I will, Because sometimes when I play videos on here, it doesn't show up on your end. I'll copy and paste this link to the video, the recording as well. But I want to watch it for you. I want to watch it with you. The other one, that's important too. The sleep guy, he's important too, but, this one's really important. Jeez, I hope this plays. Play. Just play. Okay, so it's not playing on my end, but it's really impactful, and I hope that you get a chance to watch it as well. Okay, so this is another, this isn't the Adam Show. I'm sorry it's coming across like that. When it comes to police officers getting stressed, what is it that we can do? Maladaptive coping is absolutely what you should not do. But some people do that. In the case where what you can do, I think I've mentioned this before, people often say, well, doing something is better than nothing, right? Try something. And I would say, that's true, but there's better approaches than others. So this is a study that I did with, colleagues from Johnson Schramma, colleagues from McMaster University. And we looked at creating a framework for public safety personnel. That's just the catch-all for police, fire, paramedics. Correctional officers, and we look to see what sort of programs exist. To help people deal with mental health issues as, frontline workers. And we found that there are certain programs that are well-studied, and there's lots of evidence to show that they work. So, mindfulness training, resilience-based training, thinking of educating yourself to the point where you're better equipped when the shit hits the fan on how to respond to it, right? We've given you the tools. To recover faster. In the event that you are exposed to traumatic injuries. Another one is general wellness. So just your general health and wellness, keeping yourself in shape, keeping yourself at a proper weight. Keeping yourself sleeping well. There's evidence to suggest that that works. And the last one is cognitive behavioral treatment. This is called CBT. This is sort of just reframing How you see the world, and how you process trauma. CBT, can be very good for that as well. It's often tied to a thing called exposure therapy. Where let's say you had a bad incident, and you've associated negative emotions with a bad incident that occurred in, let's say. A parking lot at the university. You know, somebody assaulted you in a university parking lot, and now you're afraid to ever go back there, and you just see that parking lot as bad. Well, that's not inherently bad, it's just a parking lot, but to undo that exposure therapy would be to bring you to that parking lot. To create new memories. That are not negative in nature, so that you reframe and repackage What the parking lot means to you, so that it's not… you don't just think it's bad. That's exposure therapy, and that's kind of sometimes baked into cognitive behavioral therapy. Other things that have less evidence to suggest that they work? Peer support. So this is huge in first responders. They think if they just talk to one another, that that'll be enough. And it does help. But there's less evidence to suggest it is as effective as categories I just mentioned, so keeping yourself healthy, CBT, things of that. Nature. Critical instance stress management, so this is after a major crisis. People sit in a circle, and they talk about how it affected them, what they saw, what they didn't see. Firefighters love this. There's not very much evidence for that as well. Spiritual responses and animal therapy, so dogs and horses and things like that. There's less evidence to suggest that that does anything. I mean, who wouldn't want to hang out with puppies? before an exam. It does stress you out. But, you know. Anyone could benefit from that, in terms of if you're very traumatized, the effect of having those services around are minimal. So, don't convince yourself. It does help, but it just doesn't have as big of a weight as Some of the other areas. I mean, who wouldn't want to hang out with dogs? I wonder if I can get dogs into the class. I always want puppies, I'm not, like, grown dogs, I'm not a huge… Or cats. Are you guys cat people? You probably are. That's for first responders, frontline workers, people that are on the job. you know, they're active. Not much research is done for recruits, so that would be who you are if you're starting into policing. You're brand new, you're working at a depot, you're working at a police academy here at the university. There is very little research to suggest that there's programs at work to keep you mentally well. As a recruit, And conversely, as a retiree. So you're no longer employed by that place of employment. They basically wipe their hands of, clean of you, which is not good, especially if you've been damaged. You did 30 years and you got damaged, and then it's out the door, and off you go. There's really not a lot of services available that have been shown to be effective. And lastly, families, right? Professional work tends to bleed into your personal life. If you have a stressed-out cop as a parent, chances are you might get stressed out. There's not much there for you. Basically, everything is tasked for the frontline member. And then we have a little bit here and there to, help you along, but not if you're retired, your recruit, or you're a family member. So what… where do we need things to improve? Well, I'll go to that second point there. Very few of the programs are evaluated. So, dog therapy, yoga therapy, all that stuff people promote. And our work would suggest that very little of it is evaluated. And if people just saying to people, you know, I liked a program because it made me feel good, that's one thing. Saying I took a program and it made me healthier. it reduced my symptoms of… of depression. That's even better, right? And I guess that's the point of the… me referencing the dog therapy. People like the idea of it, but does it manifest into tangible results in terms of your level of stress. going forward. So very few programs are actually evaluated to show that they, quote-unquote, work. Other things where we need work, equity, diversity, and inclusion. There is very little out there in terms of culturally sensitive, programs. Let's say, for example, Indigenous police officers working in remote locations. We don't have, really, programs specific to those types of police officers, but we have, let's say, for example, online cognitive behavioral therapy. which was not tailored for them, it was tailored for everyone. And if it works, it works, and if it's not recognizing unique needs that you might have, well, we don't really have anything else. So that's certainly… Where we certainly could do, better. Last one there, and I know this is gonna sound like it's not important, but it really is, is there's a lack of costing data. Or quality economic, research in this. You know, a cop shop may only have 10 grand to spend on mental health interventions. And, you know, if you provide the chief of police with a little bit of information that can help inform them to make a better decision on what to do with that $10,000, so somebody approaches a chief of police, says, I've got this yoga program, it really works. It's gonna cost you $10,000. it would be good if the chief had information to say, it's great that you have that, but I actually need something that's going to improve the well-being of my police officers. for these sort of metrics. Can you show that your yoga program does that? And in my view, if they can't show that it has any meaningful impact. Now, it doesn't have to change the world, right? But just to do something to do something is basically just spending money to spend money. You'd be leading people down the path to say. You're getting yoga therapy, why on earth do you have PTSD still? Well, it was never going to fix that problem. So managing expectations in terms of product delivery and response is crucial. And some of these things are very expensive. for what you get. A $10,000 yoga program, I don't know if that's reasonable or not. But if you're paying for professionals, you're paying for licensees, you're paying for duration of a program to be delivered. this can get very expensive very quickly. And it could be all for nothing, right? You could be spending $10,000, $100,000 on some programming. And your cops are no better off than they were when they started. In fact, in some cases, they might be worse. That's not probably likely to happen, but… manage those expectations in terms of, I spend $100,000, I'm expecting this in terms of a return on my investment. just saying I felt good. It might be enough. In my view, we can do better than that. Last slide here, it's not all doom and gloom. I kind of mentioned that policing is a stressful job, and it's dangerous, and all that stuff. Recruiters will typically mention this when they… when they talk to you. You might not see it as important, but it is. for the most part, officers generally care about making a positive impact in their community. Yeah, there's some bad apples in the bunch. Yeah, there's some bad places. But for the most part, they want to protect their community, they want to serve their community, and many of them do. We don't hear about that in the news. That's not a newsworthy story, but that is a regular shift for many police officers. Excuse me, physical fitness is encouraged. So they usually have gyms on site. And that that culture of physical fitness is something that is common in policing. I can't say it's common in a university setting. I've never really encouraged you guys to go hit the bikes or go lift weights between classes. In policing, that is pretty common for that sort of physical fitness, Culture to be in there. lots of job duties, lots of different tasks that you can do. Bigger cop shops are better for this, so if you want to do Have it be part of an aerial unit, so you want to fly a helicopter or something like that? The bigger police departments are a better spot to go for that, because not every cop shop will have those services. Lots of problem-solving opportunities, you can't arrest everyone, I've mentioned this before, so you're put in a position where you're going to have meaningful impact on Some people's lives that day, and that's, that's important. I mentioned the shift work, the 12 hours on, 12 hours off. Research would suggest that that's terrible for your health. But sometimes that works well for you in your situation, right? You've got childcare, you've got something else going on. 4 days on, 4 days off sounds pretty good, versus a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. Typically you don't have to travel for work. You typically live within driving distance of your place of employment versus, like, I don't know, a traveling salesman. You could be flying 4 or 5 days a week, and living out of hotels, living out of a suitcase. Sexy as that sounds, it sucks. So, that's good. Job security, unions, They get paid very well, for fresh… Freshly graduated, freshly minted. Liberal arts, majors, this type of work, it's hard to beat in terms of compensation. financial compensation. And there's considerable job security. Unions and policing are very strong. And, that results in, you typically get compensated very well. It comes at a cost, right? You have to do a… it's a professional job, it's a serious job. Not just sitting around twiddling your thumbs, but you are compensated. Compensated well for it. And lastly, potential to work with doggies and horses. That's just kind of the… goes back to the variety of job duties. bigger cop shop sheet will have opportunities to be dog handlers, ride-and-mounted units, aerial units. I should just… Preface that with, people typically think forensics is something they could do. These kind of all fall under the same sort of mix. Just because the specialty unit is available doesn't mean that they hire in that a lot. So… If you're wanting a very specific type of policing job. you may have to wait a couple of years before you get access to it. You will also need to do your years of service on the front line before you're eligible for that, so if you think you can just get hired on today and start flying a helicopter in two months. Probably not gonna happen. But, the opportunities will be there should that service have those, specialty units available. And again, not every place has it. Most of them have a dog handler unit. Most of them, they all have detectives and tactical units, things like that. Community police officers, recruiters. Lots of different opportunities, but that's sort of more specialized stuff. I used to have this joke about the mountaineering, section of RPS, where they… it's the team that goes out and climbs mountain… mountains in… in Regina. They're not… they're not a big unit, but they do exist. That's a joke. They don't exist. Just kind of pairing up, you know, what sort of specialty stuff they do. And, you know, there are people that don't ever get into that. There's the frontline cop, they don't want to specialize, they don't want to move into management, they like patrol. That's also an option for you as well.