|
|
TOP STORY
|
POLICE STRATEGY ON GANG VIOLENCE HASN’T BEEN WORKING, SAYS WEST VANCOUVER POLICE CHIEF KASH HEED |
By Rattan Mall
|
As a series of gangland shootings shook the Lower Mainland once again, West Vancouver Police Chief Kash Heed told The VOICE that what the police forces have been doing to deal with gang violence for the last five years hasn’t been working and we need to something different.
Calling gang violence “arguably the most pressing social problem in the region,” Heed said: “I have called for that comprehensive, coordinated, assertive strategy to deal with the suppression of these gangs, even before we get to the intervention and prevention of gang activity. So that’s where we are right now.”
He pointed out: “One only has to listen to the news early in the morning and find out what occurred. Last night ( Monday) we had a shooting in Vancouver. The night before, we had a shooting in Surrey. The night before that, we had another one in Surrey. The night before that, we had one in Coquitlam.
“So, it’s continuing. It’s not subsiding. We’ve delayed it. We’ve moved it around – we’ve moved it from one jurisdiction to the other jurisdiction. There is no coordinated fashion to deal with this problem.”
Heed added: “Thankfully, it’s not ended up in West Vancouver, but I can tell you I’ve put whatever guardians in place to ensure it doesn’t happen in West Vancouver. It may one day – those are things that I can’t predict when and if it’s going to happen, but what I can do is ensure that we, as a police agency, are doing the best we can to ensure that it doesn’t happen.”
Heed, noting that there were “significant gang members” living on the North Shore, said: “They’re involved in some activity over here, but we’re on top of them. We are monitoring them continually. We’re interdicting them whenever we can. We are letting them know that we are around. We are letting them know that their behaviour will not be tolerated anywhere on the North Shore. So we are very, very active on these members. We’ve been quite fortunate that these gang members haven’t committed their crimes – or their visible crimes, their street crimes – in West Vancouver.”
ONE YEAR AS POLICE CHIEF
Heed just completed a year – a very busy year, indeed – at the helm of the West Vancouver Police Force.
He devoted his time and energy to “turning the organization around, moving it from a traditional police organization that was buried decades ago into a contemporary organization, one that’s at the forefront of policing, one where members can be proud that they are West Vancouver police officers.”
Heed added: “And we’ve been very successful in that. We’ve revamped so many of the systems, bringing them up to an unprecedented level here in West Vancouver. … I’ve made a lot of demands of my staff and they’ve respond. Not everyone’s happy with me coming over here. When you go through that whole change-management process, you’re bound to find some resistance.
“And I’ve tried to get these people to think outside of that traditional paradigm, to think of new ways of doing business, but at the end of the day, there are some people that just don’t want to change. They take that bunker mentality. And right now I am having to blast through that bunker mentality.
But Kash noted: “The majority of the people in the West Vancouver Police Department embrace the change and they are the ones that I want to focus on to move the organization even further.”
Here is the rest of my interview with Heed:
VOICE: What have been your accomplishments in your first year?
Heed: Someone said to me the other day that I have accomplished more in the past 12 months in the West Vancouver Police Department than has been accomplished in the past 12 years in the West Vancouver Police Department.
So in essence, I have revamped the entire organization, starting with the culture, moving on into the policies and procedures, moving on to the way we do business as an organization, moving on to how we have to continually improve and serve the community in different ways than we have in the past.
The department has embarked on a new strategic direction, one that assists and shapes the organization as a professional and accountable and effective police service. So, for example, we implemented the COMPSTAT strategic management process in how we deliver our service, how we target our problems, how we’re continually out there in a pro-active fashion than just a reactive fashion.
In essence, I have changed the organization from being reactive, random and vapid
(KASH – IS THIS WHAT YOU SAID – “VAPID”? I COULDN”T CATCH ON PROPERLY TO THE WORD!)
to one that is now pro-active, directive and creative. And that is a better way of doing business. It keeps us targeting our problems. It keeps us being more accountable. It keeps us on focus of reducing crime and the fear of crime in the district of West Vancouver.
VOICE: What are the most difficult problems that you have faced there?
Heed: Property crime. Property crime is the most significant issue in every municipality right now. When I was in Vancouver, and that holds true in West Vancouver, 80 per cent of the incidents that police responded to were property-crime related. … You can check with any jurisdiction in North America and you will find the most significant incidents of crime are property-crime related.
VOICE: So how do you tackle this?
Heed: First of all, we target our offenders. … Whether it’s through our uniformed personnel or through our surveillance team, we’re on these property crime offenders all the time. We’re interdicting them when they commit a crime in West Vancouver and we are asking the courts to aggressively prosecute them and seek the stiffest penalties possible for these individuals. At least, we want to keep them out of West Vancouver. We want to keep them away from committing crimes in our residential areas and in our business districts.
VOICE: How are the Winter Games going to impact on your jurisdiction?
Heed: We are a venue city. Cypress Mountain is going to be used for the free-style skiing and for the snowboard competition. I have four officers that are assigned to the integrated security unit for the Winter Games. They are working on this right now to ensure that not only from a regional perspective but from a community perspective, from a West Vancouver perspective, we are actually at the lead on what’s going to affect our community and how we are going to respond to it to ensure that we have the right guardians in place to prevent incidents from occurring in West Vancouver. So we are in the forefront of being involved in the planning of the Games not only from a metro / regional perspective but also from a West Vancouver perspective.
|
[Go To Top]
|
| |
|
|
