Fatal Bourget shooting brings police safety concerns to the

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Fatal Bourget shooting brings police safety concerns to the

Postby Thomas » Sun May 21, 2023 1:19 pm

Fatal Bourget shooting brings police safety concerns to the fore

Sgt. Eric Mueller was shot and killed last week responding to a report of a gunshot

The killing of an Ontario Provincial Police officer in a small eastern Ontario community earlier this month has experts wondering how to make policing safer.

Sgt. Eric Mueller was shot and killed on May 11 as he responded to a report of a gunshot at a home on Laval Street in Bourget, Ont. Two other officers were injured.

In 1962, 10 Canadian police officers were killed in the line of duty, which set a record. A new record could be set in 2023.

That has former and current officers, their families and many in the public asking what can and should be done to keep officers safe.

Scott Blandford, a 30-year veteran of the London, Ont., force who now heads up Wilfrid Laurier University's policing and public safety program, said there are a multitude of factors.

He raised the issue of police duties having expanded beyond their capabilities when it comes to calls related to mental health.

"It's almost impossible to bring an officer to the level of expertise that a mental health-care practitioner would have when you consider all the other types of incidents that they also have to train for," he said.

"The demands upon the police have grown exponentially and yet the entire social safety net has not increased to support that."

Blandford said wihle officers often face potentially violent situations while responding to calls, they don't always realize the mental health factor until after they deal with the "immediate threat," like a weapon or the sound of gunshots.

When it comes to mental health, Blandford said he's spoken to police chiefs who'd be happy to have some of those responsibilities taken off their officers' plates.

"The problem is ... the social safety net has not created the resources and infrastructure to deal with these problems, so it falls upon the police to do it," he said.

"If you wanted to train an officer to that level of expertise, along with all the other training that they have to undertake, they would never be on the street."

Need mental health professionals

Blandford said Calgary has successfully used teams of mental health professionals and police to respond to certain calls and it has been a success so far.

Jennifer Schulenburg, an associate professor in the department of sociology and legal studies at the University of Waterloo and a front-line police researcher, said officers often deal with problems that society as a whole isn't facing.

"I've done ... well over 3,000 hours now, published on policing, mental health and how we are facing these intractable problems," she said.

"We're trying to resolve these problems with Band-Aids. And when the Band-Aids fall off, violence is a heightened possibility, and we can't stop passing the buck and officers are dying."

Bail reform

Justin Piché, a professor in the criminology department at the University of Ottawa, said there are no quick fixes for this problem and he doesn't agree with some of the ideas being floated.

"When we look at the circumstances of these police officer deaths across Canada, there's not a single thing that we could point to that could connect all these deaths that would point to something that we could quickly address and change," he said.

Piché said police leaders and associations across the country are asking for bail reform. In the case of the nine officers killed across the country since September, not including Mueller, only one of the accused was out on bail.

"The research that I've done, governments across the country at the provincial, territorial level are building billions of dollars worth of new prison spaces. So those investments have not been cut in an appreciable manner yet," said Piché.

Chris Williams, a co-author of Crisis in Canada's Policing and a member of the Criminalization and Punishment Education Project, agrees with Piché on that point.

"This notion is being propagated increasingly that the criminal justice system is overwhelmingly lenient in relation to individuals who are on bail under certain forms of supervision," he said.

"When you really take a look at the data, that's just completely false. It's completely erroneous."

Perception of police

Blandford said the perception of police officers has changed in the last 10 years, with the advent of social media, and that can weigh on officers.

"There's actually been studies that have supported that — with the increased use of social media ... [it's] actually caused officers to not act the way they should," he said.

"It does have a huge impact if it increases and it adds an extra layer of stress to the officers when they come upon any type of a scene."

Schulenburg said the way people view police needs to change, especially with the number of officers killed in recent months.

"These officers died trying to help people," she said. "My message is we need to remember that. They responded to a call to help people."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/o ... -1.6845184
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