Community Policing in Quebec November 2014 Voiceover: Beat Intro 00:00 This is the Beat—a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation. Toni Morgan 00:08 Hello and welcome. My name is Toni Morgan, and on behalf of the COPS Office, I would like to introduce you to Lieutenant Dave Goldsborough of the Division of Community Relations in Quebec, Canada. Lieutenant Goldsborough is here to discuss how Quebec works to engage the communities they serve. So Dave, can you describe how your department practices community policing? Lieutenant David Goldsborough 00:31 Yes, definitely. We have a department of approximately 75 police officers, and our community relations department is four officers that take care of different aspects of community policing, whether it be the use in different high schools, or our elderly, or drug conferences, or DUI conferences. And we have a lot of different responsibilities, of course, but we try to cover everything. Toni 00:59 Sounds good. So you started holding Coffee with a Cop sessions as a form of community policing. Can you tell us a little bit [about] why you made that decision and how you hold the sessions? David 01:11 Well, the decision was quite easy. More or less any program that comes forward, we’ll try it. And if it works out fine and we have a good response from the community, then we’ll try it again. And then if we really get a good response and it’s not a waste of manpower and time or whatever else and the community appreciates it, well then we’ll make a permanent program out of it and see how long it lasts and how it goes. There’s always an evaluation every few months. And Coffee with a Cop, for us, started last year, and we have three sessions every month, whether it be in a McDonalds, or a Tim Horton’s store, or what we call here in Quebec a Cafe d'Epoque. And what’s good about it for me is it’s a neutral environment. You never know what can happen. We’re going to get into a Coffee with a Cop at McDonald’s, and we’re going to meet a lot of different people. And we’re not at their house for a particular problem, or they’re not at the police station either for a particular problem. We never know what we’re going to end up talking about. And that’s probably what is so successful about it. People can feel free to drop by the McDonald’s restaurant and talk to a police office for as long as they want on any subject really. And so far it’s very, very much appreciated throughout the community. Toni 02:26 Can you tell us about other ways you engage the communities in which you serve? David 02:31 Yeah. Like I was saying, we have four different officers in the community relations department, and we get the rest of the department involved also. That’s a different aspect. It’s quite new. We’ve been doing it for two or three years. We have five patrols teams, and eight officers each. Each patrol team will have a certain responsibility when it comes to community policing. Apart from answering emergency calls or accidents or the everyday things that a police officer does, they’ll have a project. I’ll give you an example: One of our teams gives a DUI conference but in different companies. And we’re going to approach all the different companies in our industrial sector and see if they’re interested, on a Thursday or Friday evening, to ask questions to a police officer about DUI driving and how the alcohol test machines work, and what the process at court is like, and how much does it cost, and everything else, and the impact of having a criminal record after being caught driving under the influence with alcohol or drugs. We do that in different companies, for different departments in our own city, and of course in all our high schools, secondary five students, the ones that are graduating before going to college. We’ll meet with every class before the prom and make sure they understand the impact of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. We have other programs. Each team has a different program. Another good example is our baby seat program. We’re going to visit all the different daycare centers and meet with all the parents to make sure their child’s safety seats are installed properly. We’ll even do a campaign at—we have a store here in Quebec called Canadian Tire. It’s a big department store for just about anything. And they do sell baby seats. Now want happens is we’ll set up a clinic on the outside of the store, and we’ll have about eight different officers checking baby seats. As clients show up to the store, we’ll verify all the baby seats for them, make sure they’re installed properly. And if they’re missing any equipment or any special attachments, we’ll provide them for the client. And that’s more or less how we take care of communities while the other projects that we take care of in our community. Toni 04:39 Great. So Dave, could you offer other departments insight on institutionalizing community policing in their departments? David 04:48 Well, of course, I think one of the good things about community work is that it’s positive, or mostly positive. We’re going to be speaking to people that are not necessarily in trouble at the moment. They are not being arrested or in trouble or living some kind of tragedy. It’s usually on a more friendly type basis. If I can talk to you about a problem—every city has a problem with people speeding. Now that’s easy to quantify. We’re going to have a complaint about somebody going too fast on a certain road or a number of cars going too fast. And we’ll set up a police car and a few officers with a radar machine, and we’ll give out tickets, of course, like every other police department. And it’s easy to quantify. We’re going to be there for five days, and we’ll give out so many tickets. And the following week, we’ll go back, and there’ll be a surveillance done to see what the impact was—have people slowed down or are there just as many, and should we continue this project for another week or two or whatever. But when it comes to community work, it’s hard to quantify, but we get better long-term results. Now these conferences that we do on driving under the influence, well, they’ll have an impact on the long- term basis because more people get educated on what the consequences of getting caught [are]. I notice with the Coffee with a Cop, people are talking about it all the time, even on a personal basis. I’ll meet friends and this and that, and they’re going to tell me how wonderful it was. It was fun to meet the cops and talk about this and talk about that, not having any pre-established subject. We’re not going there to talk about one particular subject but about anything. People are very, very comfortable with the fact that we’re there in the restaurants, and so far everything has been positive, both on the side of the citizens and also on the side of the police officers who attend. Right now, as far as I can see, we’re going to continue with the project in 2015. And of course every six months we re- evaluate. And for 2016, we’re going to re-evaluate. But the way it’s going now, we’re going to continue for sure. Toni 06:53 So, Dave, on the behalf of the COPS Office, we would like to thank you for all your community policing work your agency is doing in the communities of Quebec, Canada. David 07:03 Well, thank you very much. And thanks for listening, and thank you for having me on. Voiceover: Beat Exit 07:08 The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice, COPS Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, developing partnerships, and solving problems. Voiceover: Disclaimer 07:24 The opinions contained herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or polices of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific agencies, companies, products, or services should not be considered an endorsement by the authors or the U.S. Department of Justice. Rather, the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues.