New study suggests police officers are less likely to engage in proactive work

By Rachel Bell

BELLEVILLE – Police officers are more likely to wait for 911 calls, rather than intervening when needed or seeking out crime, according to a recently released Canadian study.

But there is no evidence this is happening here, a spokesperson for the Belleville Police Service said.

Gregory Brown, Ph.D. candidate at Carleton University surveyed 23 police services in Canada to track the phenomenon of de-policing when officers avoid unnecessary public interactions due to fear of being scrutinized.

“The data demonstrates that de-policing is happening in all policing jurisdictions including small and medium-sized police departments,” said Brown. “So among my 23 police services in the study, some were small, much smaller than Belleville, some were medium sized and some were large. So the phenomenon of de-policing was consistent across all of the police services, there was very little distinction between small, medium and large.”

Belleville Police Staff Sargent Rene Aubertin said he isn’t able to comment on behalf of every Belleville officer.

“Every officer has to make that decision for themselves. I can’t tell you if there’s a decrease (in proactive policing),” he said.

However, Brown disagrees.

“I would suggest Belleville will be experiencing the same kind of de-policing as major cities are,” he said.

Brown explained that proactive policing actually started in approximately the 1970’s.

“Before that, policing was more concerned with reactive policing and those kinds of things. So there was an initiative of philosophical change to proactive policing. And so the data suggests it was relatively constant in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, meaning the de-policing idea is a relatively recent phenomenon that coincides with increased visibility of police officers, and increased public criticism of the police,” he said.

Police officers are particularly concerned with how the public will interpret what takes place, Brown said.

“(Officers are worried about) events being misinterpreted by the public, being mischaracterized by activists, those kinds of things. Officers made a point of stressing to me that they’re not actually concerned about being accountable for their actions, what they are concerned about is the misinterpretation of actions,” he said. ” So if somebody watches a snippet of a video and they leak to the conclusion that this is clearly racial profiling, and this is clearly police brutality before all the facts are known before all of the context is taken into account.”

Local officials agree.

Aubertin said that a snippet of a video may lead to the public coming to conclusions.

“A lot of the videos, you see parts of an incident, you see the end of an incident, and people don’t generally post the good things we do because they’re not as exciting,” he said.

Low staffing may also play a factor in why officers are de-policing, however, Brown’s research didn’t cover that aspect.

“Some union people who have commented in the aftermath of the release of the study have suggested that this coincides with reductions in staffing,” he said.

The community may be able to help police officers regain their confidence and go back to proactive policing, including becoming more educated about police use of force.

“I mean not all police use of force is police brutality,” Brown said.

The public needs to learn about the varioius policies like use of force and what actions an officer can legally take, he explained.

Brown says there is often a misconception.

“For example, if somebody tries to hit a police officer, and the police officer punches somebody in the face, that somehow that’s police brutality. In fact, that is completely authorized police behaviour,” he said.

Brown’s data also didn’t look into the impact de-policing is having on communities. He says some policing scholars, particularly in the United States are making a link that de-policing is resulting in greater levels of violent crime.

Some people are calling this the Ferguson effect, he said, which suggests that the police disengaging from proactive duties is emboldening criminals to not be as afraid of getting caught by the police, and therefore resulting in a much higher level of shootings and violent crimes.

“Dialogue is the first step. Once we’re all on the same page we can start to look at some solutions to it, but I don’t see an end to it in the near future,” Brown said.