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Opinion

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This article was published 15/12/2017 (2323 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It has almost become a mantra of the times.

Job-hunting sons and daughters of baby boomers have it tougher than their parents, who can remember being able to launch a lifelong career with only a high school diploma.

Not so much, anymore.

Unless, maybe, you want to join the Winnipeg Police Service.

If you’re interested — and, judging by the more than 2,000 employment applications the WPS has received during the past four years, you wouldn’t be alone — all you need to do is find your diploma and prepare for background investigators to look into every corner, every social media site and everyone in your life.

In the meantime, the wait could be as long as the odds are of getting hired, even for the qualified women, visible minorities and Indigenous applicants the WPS covets but can’t seem to attract. That’s because of those 2,000-plus applications, just 136 new officers have been hired since 2014.

The lure, beyond the dynamic nature of the job itself, is a generous benefit package and pension, plus the prospect of overtime to top up a tantalizing basic salary that can reach six figures for constables. In fact, two years ago, nearly 75 per cent of the service’s 1,451 officers earned $100,000 or more with overtime.

But it wasn’t what cops earn that intrigued me about the recruiting process — it was what police are looking for in candidates. How do some applicants get tripped up? And why, with so many lined up wanting the job, does the force select people who end up on the other side of law, getting arrested by fellow officers?

What got me interested initially was a couple of chance conversations with fathers whose sons applied and didn’t get in. The two dads independently expressed anger about how their boys were treated by retired cops acting as background investigators for the WPS.

Coincidentally, both young men had their applications deferred, meaning that for whatever reasons, neither was judged ready to be hired and they can’t reapply for up to five years. Which feels like a lifetime for guys in their 20s trying to find a meaningful career direction. Both fathers believed their sons had been deferred unfairly, one because of what the dad considered guilt by association — his son’s relationship with a close relative.

Last month, I sat down with deputy chief Gord Perrier, who, as a young would-be cop, was deferred twice and waited six years before getting on the force in 1994. When I shared some of the fathers’ complaints, Perrier suggested sons don’t always tell their dads everything that happened during the interview process. Applicants are never told why they were deferred or disqualified, but he believes they can figure it out.

So, what about guilt by association? What if someone grows up in a family where one son is dealing drugs and the other wants a career arresting drug dealers?

“It’s a very fair question,” Perrier said, “because people worry about that all the time.”

His answer?

“You can’t pick your family, can you? You’re your own person, we get that. But we do our investigations. And you say, ‘Well, I don’t associate with that person and haven’t for years. And I establish you were out drinking with them last week. It’s not the association that’s the problem. It’s the integrity thing that’s the problem.”

Of course, it can be the association that’s the problem, too. Perrier took that to a place I hadn’t considered with a question that hadn’t occurred to me.

“Do we get organized crime trying to infiltrate our recruiting process? The short answer is ‘yes.’”

I asked if they had ever been successful.

“Well, not that I know of,” he replied.

But in the wider context of Canadian policing, “yes, they’ve been successful,” he acknowledged.

That’s one of the reasons police screen an applicant’s connections, and not just on Facebook.

“And we don’t make apologies for those kinds of checks, either,” he said. “I mean, people sign off knowing this kind of process is going to occur.”

Investigators will, as Perrier suggested, get to know you better than your family does. They’ll even dig into your banking records and financial situation, generally.

“You can owe a ton of money,” he said.

“And we’re still going to take you.”

As long as you’re not doing something illegal, such as kiting cheques to support five credit cards. That’s the sort of thing background investigators look into.

But what does the WPS look for in a candidate?

Perrier referred to empathy — being able to connect and communicate with people — and having a measure of humility. An open, thoughtful mind is vital. As are continuing education and volunteering. Then there are those two fundamental pillars of policing.

“Honesty and ethics are huge,” he said. “I can’t stress that enough.”

To illustrate how important they are, he related a story about an applicant who arrived for a background interview. He recalled the investigator starting the conversation with a prescribed question.

“What was your day like today?”

“Oh, I had this. That’s it.”

“‘Were you supposed to work today?”

“No, no. I took the day off.”

“And then,” Perrier said, “we look and we find out the person actually booked sick that day. Because we check every time.”

Perrier still shakes his head.

“You know what it takes to get a background interview?

“I mean, these are $100,000 jobs. And you weren’t brave enough to say, ‘My boss won’t let me out of work that day. Can I reschedule?’ Because we will. We’ve done things on weekends, on evenings.”

Perrier recognizes everyone makes mistakes. Police don’t demand perfection, but…

“If you don’t have enough humility to say, ‘I’m a human being. I’ve made mistakes,’ how can I rely on you to take the oath to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable?”

Two other qualities police look for? Stability and resilience.

There are seven steps in the gauntlet that is the application process, including a personality and psychological assessment. The central part of what the psychological assessors are looking for is an applicant’s ability to not only do the job, but cope with what cops have to do, see and be seen by the public as being.

So they will look at what your risks are when it comes to self-medicating, for instance.

But psychological profiling isn’t a perfect filter. Or the complete measure of how a man or woman will manage the stress of the street and, sometimes, the undertow of the police subculture.

Consider the arrests this year of five police officers for impaired driving. One of them — Justin Holz, a 34-year-old cop with eight years on the job, who was working in major crimes — went for after-work drinks with some other WPS members and then got behind the wheel of his car. He’s charged with killing 23-year-old Cody Severight in a Main Street hit-and-run a short time later.

There have been other Winnipeg cops arrested and charged over the past couple of years, including the tragic case of Trent Milan. Last year, the 18-year veteran was charged with 34 offences, including possession of prohibited weapons; trafficking in cocaine, meth and ecstasy; attempting to obstruct justice; and sharing police information with members of the public. Not long after he was charged, Milan died in an apparent suicide in a highway collision near Birds Hill park.

“Predicting human behaviour is really difficult,” Perrier said. “There’s going to be misses.”

Some cops can reach a breaking point because of accumulated job stress, vicarious trauma or marital problems.

“All of those things, when you pile them on each other, sometimes you end up in a place where, ‘Well, how did that person get hired?’” he said.

Still, Perrier said the WPS relies on the psychological assessment aspect “fairly heavily.”

Some forces, including Edmonton’s, use polygraph tests. The WPS does not.

Const. Heather Spence of the Edmonton Police Service’s recruit selection unit, said they find it an effective tool in their vetting process.

“There are definitely people who are eliminated at the polygraph stage,” she said.

Winnipeg doesn’t take that extra step, in part, Perrier said, because of the cost.

But cost doesn’t seem to be as much of an issue for the Edmonton service, which travels the country attending job fairs. In October, they touched down here, where about 130 Winnipeggers registered and 70 of them wrote the first-step tests to join the EPS.

“Cherry-picking” is what Perrier called it.

Perhaps, but one of those cherries who turned out in hopes of being picked had already been discarded by Winnipeg police. He was one of the two young men whose fathers had complained to me about unfair deferment.

He apparently was trying again — much sooner — with Edmonton. But doesn’t being turned away by the WPS mean he’s not ready for that city’s force either?

“No,” Spence said, “We do our own thing. We assess each candidate regardless of their status with another department.”

All of which suggests that the competition in police recruiting isn’t just among long lines of applicants.

Not when one police service feels it can’t afford not to take the road to recruit.

And not when an applicant who gets rejected in Winnipeg can apply for a job in Edmonton.

Where, according to the latest website posting, starting salaries are even higher than here.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca