THUNDER BAY - The Thunder Bay Police Service is looking at ways to diversify its workforce and gauge the public’s trust in how it conducts policing in the city.
During the Thunder Bay Police Services Board meeting on Tuesday, Leisa Desmoulins, a consultant with the Thunder Bay Police, provided the board with an update on the Organizational Change Project, Shaping Our Future.
The working group, which was launched in January 2018, conducted an internal workforce census to compile an aggregate look at the composition of the police force.
The survey was given to 320 members of the police service across all branches and 171 responses were received, a completion rate of approximately 53 per cent.
“One of the things I was most pleased about was it had representation from people who work across all branches of the services, civilians, people who work in different branches, people who work as police officers, people who work in senior management,” said Desmoulins of the census.
The census revealed that the aggregate member of the Thunder Bay Police Service is a constable, male, aged 45 to 54-years-old, legally married, identifies as heterosexual, works full-time on rotating shifts, has a community college degree or certificate, and is not a member of a visible minority or Indigenous.
When compared to the Thunder Bay census, the working age is younger than the average in Thunder Bay, marital status is on par, education level is higher, but racial diversity seen in the general population is not reflected in the police service.
Desmoulins said the next step for the working group will be conducting an external survey that looks at the community’s trust in the police force.
“I think what we want to know is how well do racialized or Indigenous people trust policing and get a base line for that in the same we developed a baseline internally in terms of what the composition of the police service looks like,” she said.
The Thunder Bay Police Service already conducts an annual community satisfaction survey, but Police Service Board chair, Jackie Dojack, said trust and satisfaction are two very different things.
“How do we gain trust, how do we create trust, how do we foster trust?” she said. “I think that is going to be very important for us. What steps do we take to change the organization so that we can have people trust in the police?”
Part of that trust can come from racial diversity on the police service and Dojack said Thunder Bay Police has made some strides forward, but understands that more needs to be done and reaffirmed that the police service intends to increase racial diversity.
“It is certainly something that every police service is looking at across the country,” she said. “Through the years, we didn’t use to have any females. We now have some. We don’t have the number that equals the number of females in the population, that’s one thing we certainly want to increase.”
Desmoulins said racially diverse police force that reflects the population of the community it serves is an important tool for increasing recruitment, but also creating trust.
“People who live in the community have trust if they see other people who look like them in the police service and the feel that it is representative of them,” she said.
The Shaping Our Future working group will meet again in early April and Desmoulins said she is hoping to provide the Police Services Board an update by mid-May.
“It’s going to change the way we do business,” Dojack said. “It’s going to help our officers have another perspective. I really think it’s going to change every way we do business.”
