The Ottawa Police Service’s 9th Annual Human Rights Learning Forum

The Ottawa Police Service’s 9th Annual Human Rights Learning Forum

The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) recently hosted their 9th Annual Human Rights Forum with the key themes being programs and projects related to mental health and addictions, intimate partner violence, and human rights and safety.  What makes the OPS’ Human Rights Forum so unique is that it is a cost-free day-long event that is open to the public, senior leaders who are responsible for different public safety and policing portfolios, which are chosen based on relevance to societal events, and various public safety and policing stakeholders also attend the event.

The Forum featured senior OPS leaders responsible for overseeing domestic violence remedies, protesting and demonstrations, and community relations.  Additionally, the event featured a variety of community organizations and community builders also involved in intersecting work.  Throughout the day-long event, police members were encouraged to move around from table to table and to interact with as many different participants as possible, and it created for a countless number of takeaways.

The Panel on Mental Health and Addictions

On the topic of mental health and addictions, the OPS highlighted the implementation of the alternate neighborhood crisis response (Project ANCHOR).  Project ANCHOR provides free, confidential support for individuals aged 16 and older residing in Centretown and experiencing a mental health or substance use-related crisis, and the service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  To access it, all a person needs to do is call 2-1-1 and they will get connected with someone to assist them, responding on foot or with a vehicle.  The support stretches from immediate issues to follow-up support days after the incident.

Most of the ANCHOR teams are comprised of people with “either lived or living experience of substance use and mental health issues”.  Every individual is provided 200 hours of training in crisis response and de-escalation to handle crises using culturally sensitive trauma-informed techniques.  These teams are sent out for non-violent, non-emergency calls and they are tasked with providing wellness checks or in-person support throughout a crisis.  Additionally, these teams provide referrals for follow-up services for things like counselling resources and food banks.

One of the community builders working with Project Anchor spoke to their experience related to growing up in a household that struggled with substance misuse, mental health, and trauma.  Their story highlighted how their mother, a person who suffered from substance-related challenges, mental health and trauma, told the two siblings to go into their room and that “this is all ending today”, and how she picked up a can of gasoline and matches.  The siblings cried themselves to sleep before waking up in the early morning hours, and when they opened their room door, they saw their mom sleeping on the floor.  The siblings got dressed and quickly and fled to school, hours before it was open.  Eventually they broke down in school, telling staff what happened, getting the support that they had needed.

Another story highlighted how a fostered son, whose familial roots were rooted in major trauma, struggled with substance misuse and mental health.  When the parent attempted to help the son, things escalated, and they had no choice but to call the police.  After calling the police, they showed up and took the son away, and the parent described how them calling the police ruined the family dynamic and how trust between the parent and son had been destroyed after the police became involved.

In short, Project ANCHOR was a program that many community organizations and community builders felt positive about.  The speaker mentioned how they could have benefitted from a program like ANCHOR, when they were experiencing their challenges, and their main message centered around “partnership work” to solving many of society’s problems.

The Panel on Domestic Violence

On the topic of domestic violence, the OPS could be described as a leading policing stakeholder in relation to their approach related to domestic violence-related matters and with their efforts involving missing and murdered Indigenous women in Ottawa.  The OPS’ senior leader responsible for this portfolio is Superintendent Heather Lachine, leading the discussion on the different methodologies behind the OPS response to such situations.

Over the past year, the OPS serviced 22,000 calls related to domestic violence, and their response to domestic violence-related incidents highlight the OPS as being a leading police stakeholder.  One of these responses included the creation of a risk-assessment tool with Western University that focused on how data is collected in cases of domestic violence.  Then there was also a review process for calls related to domestic violence that resulted in no charges, there were two yearly reviews of those files by a review team, which included group discussion of the police reports.  That feedback would be sent back to the OPS and legal experts for analysis, and it was part of why the OPS has been able to improve their response to calls involving domestic violence.  Additionally, the OPS has been working on developing more trauma-informed response rooms (soft rooms), that are designed to make victims feel more at ease when interacting with police.

One of the community builders also spoke on Indigenous-specific challenges and how it was not uncommon for a few hundred women to get turned away from shelters on any given night, with a third of them being Indigenous.  Many women that visit these shelters tend to be fleeing domestic violence environments.  Most of the time they tend to have underlying conditions that they do not seek out treatment for out of fear of losing their children.  As a result, a partnership has been created involving different Indigenous organizations and other organizations as well as the OPS, in order build a “family healing lodge” – a place to support the family needs of survivors.

The Panel Related to Protests and Demonstrations

Over the past few years, no place in Canada has been burdened by constant demonstrations and protests to the degree that Ottawa has.  The OPS’ senior leader responsible for major events planning is Acting Staff Sergeant Phong Le, and he provided insights on how the OPS approach major event planning including protests and demonstrations, and how protests have only recently begun taking up a significant amount of police resources, with the arrival of COVID-19 and the emergence of global conflicts.

The annual Carleton University versus Ottawa University football game, also known as the Panda Game, has always seen students turn into partygoers and congregate around traditional student-living areas.  This event was a non-issue prior to COVID-19, but following the first Panda game since the lockdowns, things got out of control quite quickly.  What transpired resembled a riot, given how cars were flipped and property was destroyed.  The following year’s event also saw large crowds of partygoers congregate in the same areas, but there was no rioting.  Then during the Trucker Convoy, the OPS managed to ensure that those demonstrations remained peaceful, with only a few isolated incidents.  However, the coverage of such events usually saw those isolated incidents get amplified, and for people to confuse the isolated incident for what was transpiring at large.

Another speaker on the topic was a human rights lawyer who highlighted how a potential Bylaw that was in the works that would regulate protests and demonstration by requiring that protestors need permits to protest.  There was reference to how Washington D.C.  and London (England) did not have similar laws.  Additionally, the human rights lawyer highlighted different human rights legislation (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 / The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966 / The International Labour Organization Conventions), which Canada was a signatory to, but also how Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms also enshrined the fundamental freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association.  Essentially, when protestors and demonstrators engaged in violence or destruction of property, then a police intervention made sense in such situations, but over policing peaceful protests for “grey area offences” was a disservice to democracy and democratic institutions.

Post-Panel Intermission Conversations on Policing, PTSD, and LGBTQ Rights

What made the Forum so unique was that it was organized so that each table featured two members who worked in policing: civilian members or sworn members.  Our table featured one of each.  Others at the tabled included a human rights advocate with international experience, a federal government employee that worked on policy-related files, a frontline health worker, and me.  Other interactions included chatting with the chief of police, senior police leaders, human rights lawyers and advocates, and other community builders.

One of the chats that took place around our table centered around the realities of pursuing a career in policing.  The police officer at our table referenced how they experienced the loss of human life on their first shift, and how that experience has stuck with them to this day.  There was also the discussion of how “burnout” in policing is something that is much more than the term can describe and it was suggested that 99.9% of police officers experience PTSD-related conditions by the time they finish their career.  The chat also touched on the prevalence of self-medicating and alcohol misuse in policing, a major health struggle for Generation X and early Millennial  officers, but still a persistent problem even among younger hires.  Then how the profession of policing had the shortest lifespan among all professions once officers retired from their career, from all the on-the-job pressures and the constant exposure to the worst of society.

During the intermissions, officers would move around from table to table.  This resulted in a rather unique chat with other officers that identified as members of the LGBTQ community.  During a chat with an officer that was one of the LGBTQ officers, there was mention of how the LGBTQ community was rather small and it was not uncommon for LGBTQ officers to get excluded from the LGBTQ community events.  Being alienated from their community was not incapacitating, officers understood the “why” behind it, but they would prefer if that were not the case.  When the conversation touched on the anti-LGBTQ landscape, I was able to add to the discussion by highlighting the power of “popular culture”, describing how language in film and music influenced me and all my friends (all of us straight, and the majority stemming from early generation households) with the language we used as we transitioned from adolescence to adulthood.

Without exposure to people across different lines of difference, including LGBTQ persons, which none of us had, what we understood about “others” was learned through film and music.  It was only the coming of maturity that brought about the realizations of a morally polluted culture, which many have still to realize.  Today, the consumption of “popular culture” has expanded beyond film, television, and radio, and, while more people are aware that all people have much more in common than they have different, the LGBTQ community is being targeted again.  This time around, the language is more dehumanizing, and it is being permeated across social network silos, “protected” under the guise of free speech.  Perhaps that would change if people were lifted outside of their silos and into placed into open spaces and able to interact people across all lines of difference.

At the end of the Forum, Ottawa Police Chief, Eric Stubbs, was kind enough to have a sit-down chat and share a few minutes of his time to answer some questions related to the intersection between domestic violence and victims who are in Canada without legal status.  Although the OPS had sophisticated methodologies in place related to responding to instances of domestic violence, there are limitations to turning to the police for help and reporting domestic violence and human trafficking that are not capable of being accounted for – victims who are without legal status to be in Canada.

In particular, I was looking to explore the intersection between police responses related to interactions involving individuals who are without legal status to be in Canada, and the potential issues related to that response when it comes to victims of domestic violence and human trafficking.  The current police response related to officers interacting with individuals who are without legal status to be in Canada requires police to detain them until CBSA officers arrive and pick them up.  That response could complicate situations when the domestic violence and human trafficking victims that turn to police are without legal status to be in Canada, because they would have to be detained and for the CBSA to be notified.

So, if the Charter of Rights and Freedoms affords protection to every person in Canada regardless of whether they were a Canadian citizen or without legal status, and if the police are obligated to detain a person without legal status to be in Canada and to hand them over to the CBSA, then doing so has implications on victims reaching out to the police for help in such instances of domestic violence and human trafficking.  And arguably complicating the matter more is the fact that are no legal precedents that have been established regarding a “how-to” respond in such situations.

Chief Stubbs was quick to recognize that changes to different programs creates potential challenges, and shared how police officers also had discretion with how they approached differing situations, but that their main priority was always keeping people safe.  Chief Stubbs suggested reaching out to Superintendent Lachine who is the OPS subject matter expert on domestic violence-related matters, then inquired about my angle regarding the matter, which I summarized, mentioning how it would likely be an upcoming topic that I would look to connect with different policing and public safety stakeholders.  It is an intersection that is loaded with complexities and challenges, an immigration issue that has the potential to permanently change Canada’s public safety landscape.

If what public safety and policing stakeholders have been saying about human trafficking currently being among the top challenges they face when it comes to policing, imagine when many millions of people lose their legal status to be in Canada, how criminals are going to go after them to exploit them, including the human trafficking of women and children.