Police training gaps create racial blind spots for new recruits: Brantford chief

The chief of Brantford Police Service worries the training officers receive is stunting any attempts at improving diversity and policing with race and historical context in mind.

Rob Davis grew up in Six Nations of the Grand River. When he's working as Brantford's police lead, he thinks of The Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, Inquiries into Ipperwash, Oka, Missing and Murdered Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and other reports — he worries new recruits and leaders in other Canadian police services won't.

"The attrition of police leaders is happening so quick and that generation coming behind us is so young, there's a disconnect" he explained on Metro Morning.

"The Royal Commission came out in '97, the Ipperwash report was 2007 — if you think the young officer on the streets in his mid-20s or the sergeant in his early-30s, really, are they remembering these inquiries? Are they referenced in our training? I suggest not."

While those conversations continue in senior management circles, many of whom are retiring, Davis fears younger officers are missing that context when policing.

"I'm concerned those lessons are going to be lost."

A lack of recruiting with diversity in mind is one contributor according to Davis. But the other is the training officers receive.

"It's become a 'check-the-box' exercise, I saw that firsthand after Oka ... 'we'll do a Power Point on Indigenous awareness and it's all good.' I'm speaking on the Indigenous context but it's beyond that," he described. 

"When we've had success from recruiting from different cultures, we typically put them in our institutions for training to become like the standard, which, policing in the Canadian context hasn't changed a heck of a lot in the century."

Davis looks back to his time with Six Nations police, when the service debuted in the '80s. One of their pillars was to be immersed in the community they served and to adapt to its citizens, as opposed to the opposite. He said he has applied that to every other police service he joined.

"When I was in Dryden, it hosted the All Bands Hockey Tournament and I remember holding the door for a young Indigenous family from Nishnawbe Aski nation and the lady looked at me and said, 'Thanks, I've never had a cop hold the door for me before.' " he recalled.

"They sound so minimal but it's those little things that can be the catalyst for significant changes if we take things down to the basics and treat people as people ... there has to be more of a willingness for the system to be more dynamic and nimble to adjust to the cultures we're policing."