Every year the Ottawa Police Service organizes a Gala to recognize the dedication and sacrifice that Ottawa police officers make to help keep the city safer. At the Gala, a handful of officers are recognized and awarded for their acts of bravery, acts that had life-changing implications. Although most of those in attendance tend to be municipal policing stakeholders, local first responders, and police from other jurisdictions, the event sees a variety of different people attend. My attendance at the Gala, given the events that unfolded over the past year and a half, may have come as a surprise, but it was a great night and an event that I would recommended to others.
Two things that made that evening were the chats with those seated at the same table and hearing the stories behind the awards. At our table, I was seated with a few members of the VIA Rail police service, including Deputy Chief Jean-Ernest Celestin, and retired members of the foreign service and armed forces. Prior to chatting with Deputy Chief Celestin and his colleagues, the entire table was unaware that Canada had a designated police service specifically tasked with coast-to-coast responsibilities. Policing human trafficking was the biggest challenge plaguing every province, where the VIARail trains were being utilized to facilitate the transport of individuals to Canada’s biggest cities, where they would end up getting sex trafficked. After expressing my interest in learning more and wanting to profile the VIARail police service for the purposes of an academic article and to provide insight into a newer space within the policing and public safety ecosystem., I exchanged information with the Deputy Chief Celestin,
A chat with the retired members of the foreign service and armed service segued into their time overseas, particularly the years spent in Germany before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Few people are likely to be aware just how unlikely the reunification of the two Germanys really was, or that all of Europe’s superpowers were against it, but their time during that period was fascinating. However, their rules for being stationed in Germany at that time were that they were not allowed to attend any events that could be misconstrued as being “activist” events. So, they were unable to attend some of the most popular speeches given at that time by the likes of Chancellor Helmut Kohl and President Ronald Reagan. The chat segued to being deployed to Rwanda during the crisis and the world’s early introduction to child soldiers. Experiencing those events during a time where there were no cell phones and social network platforms was described as something that nothing could prepare them for, and we chatted about favourite decades in history.
The evening’s award winners were quite impressive. One award was handed out to two neighbourhood resource officers who witnessed a shooting in the city’s core and who managed to chase down the armed gunman and disarm him. A second award was handed out to a member in the technology department who had helped a smaller police service in the US locate and airlift a lost Canadian hiker after dangerous weather was approaching. A third award was handed out to an officer who jumped down the side of slippery rocks and into a flowing body of water to save a man that had attempted to commit self-harm. A fourth award was handed out to a member who spearheaded the service’s anti-racism data, which was described as one of the largest in Canadian policing history. A fifth award was handed to a group of officers who had helped to evacuate people from a burning building after a man had barricaded himself in an apartment and set fire to it. That group of award winners were visibly different from one another, and one of the VIARail police officers said it best, “Diversity creates superheroes.”
Before the evening was over, I had to make sure to say hello to some familiar faces, including police board members, the Chief and his Deputy Chiefs, and the Police Association President. Everyone seemed surprised, but my message was the same, “There is no reason I can’t say hi.”, “Those award winners are not always the officers most people deal with. If they were, people would probably feel different about a lot of things related with police.” and “If someone has an issue, then come to me directly”, and wishing them luck with their work. And they seemed to get it.
One of the things that I found out while chatting with the Ottawa Police Association President, Matthew Cox, was that Carleton University Professor Darryl Davies had passed away from a freak accident, and it even caught him by surprise. Professor Davies’ teaching method was covered in “Criminology with Carleton University professor Darryl Davies”, featuring the Ottawa Police Association, and it made for a rich learning experience. Prior to Professor Davies passing, he had invited me to present to his students this Fall, and we had discussed expanding the in-class presentations to include a variety of policing and public safety stakeholders, from the frontlines to the brass circle. The majority of Carleton’s faculty at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice has differing views from Professor Davies about opening the classroom to policing and public safety stakeholders. Hopefully some common ground can be found for the Ottawa Police Association and other policing and public safety stakeholders because of how eager the learners were about having the opportunity to learn.
In addition to everything, the Gala also had some really cool prizes up for auction, and I ended up winning a hockey stick signed by Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuck. On my way to pay for the item, near the entrance, there were two police officers keeping tabs on everyone because this was a wet party, and it was going until 1AM. So, I made an inquiry, asking the officer about where I could pay for my item to avoid shoplifting it before giving a shoulder tap and saying that I was joking. Then while waiting to pay, explaining my tactics to another attendee, how I put the odds in my favor by channelling my inner WWF “Latino Heat” (Eddie Guerrero). All of it was enough for me to decide that I will probably be doing it again next year, if not for the cool conversation and the stories behind the awards then definitely for the sports memorabilia auctions.