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posted July 7, 2005
The Police Need Our Reality Check
Attempts to engage the help of police at Fourteen Division to make the park safer have not been very successful over the years. So we’ve had to learn how to deal with disturbances ourselves, most times. (We’re still got lots to learn, but standards of behaviour in the park have improved as a result of our determination.)
It’s not that police don’t come to the park, they come often, driving all over the grass in their cruisers. Sometimes they park several cars in the middle of the park and chat, and then if they get a call on their radio, they drive through the park very fast on their way out. Occasionally there are bicycle police as well, which is safer. But these unscheduled visits to the park often seem to center on asking black park users for identification, for reasons that are not always clear. Recently there have been visits to the park by police on motorcycles, again cruising over the grass (but more slowly than the cars).
Fourteen Division officers recently told park staff that they drive through Dufferin Grove Park so much because this park is dangerous, there are robberies, and there are vicious youth gangs here dealing in crack cocaine. Since none of these things seem true about the park, we have a puzzle: what makes the officers think this way?
One thing is that many of the police constables we see are very young and many may just be starting out in the force. There are no familiar faces among them, no one introduces themselves, and none of the police seem to be curious to find out more about the park or the neighbourhood from those of us who live here. We have heard that up to 80 per cent of the Toronto police don’t live in the city. If they come in only to work, from Brampton or from Pickering, and have never experienced ordinary life in a downtown neighbourhood, how much does that affect their ability to understand where they are?
Police operating in a bubble are not a good thing. They need our help. Park users who encounter the police driving through the park may want to stop them and say a friendly hello, introduce themselves, and tell the young officers a bit about the park and the neighborhood. Community policing won’t work without a genuine connection, built one conversation at a time, and we park users may have to take the initiative.