WRPS Acknowledged
Posted Oct 24, 2011 12:10:34 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Waterloo Regional Police are being recognized by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and Cisco, winning the 2011 Community Policing Award.
Sergeant Sloden Lackovic told 570 News the criteria used to grant the award “has this police service come up with an innovative or pioneering technique in practicing community policing and is is part of what they do on a continual basis.”
What the police used to illustrate their efforts, Lackovic said, “started in 2006, in the Alison Neighbourhood in Cambridge.” That area has a large newcomer population made up of mainly Muslims. “There was a lot of racially motivated violence and crime targeted toward that community, said Lackovic, the focal point of the violence was around an “overgrown, metal footpath tunnel that went under some railroad tracks.”
Lakovic said “it was the one thing that could define all the problems of that neighbourhood.”
The tunnel connected the community to the mosque they would worship at, “they didn’t feel safe using it. Their kids would be bullied and assaulted by other kids waiting for them on the other side of the tunnel.”
The police contacted a number of community members in the area, “we knew we couldn’t do it alone,” said Lackovic, “Immigrant Services, the YMCA, the mosque, the city of Cambridge and numerous other partners were contacted.” That is when an action plan was worked through, “we came up with some ideas of things we could do.”
One of those ideas was to clear the brush around the over-grown tunnel. “we cut back the trees, we cleaned up the tunnel and we didn’t do it alone, we got the people that lived in the community to come out and help,” Lackovic said. “I think that is what made it something special, because they were all a part of that.”
Lackovic believes that it led to the neighbourhood trusting the police services more, “I don’t think they had a whole lot of trust for us. Being new to the country, being new to the way policing is practiced in Canada, we had to develop that trust with them and that took some time.”
The initiative continues to this day, “we still meet with those same partners that started the ball rolling in 2006,” said Lackovic. “Community policing is working in partnership with people from the community to jointly solve crime and problems together.”
Chief Matt Torigian and Superintendent Barry Zehr will accept the award on Wednesday at the 118th Annual International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference in Chicago, Illinois.
