Salut

HELP fight crime:
join your local police
force.

Or in the case of North
Vancouver: help your local
police force join vou.

In the field of conimuni-
ty policing that is the kev to
the crime lock.

On Oct. 22, the
Edgemont Community
Policing, Centre celebrated
its first anniversary.

Big deal, you sav? Some
kind of store-tront police
public relations song and
dance.

Well, ves and no,

It’s a bigger deal than
you might think.

Centres like Edgemont
are bringing the police back
into our communities and
by osmosis bringing the
community back into our
police. And that is good
news for both.

Statistics don’t tell the
whole story but they tell a
piece of it.

For example, prior to the
incorporation in the early
‘90s of community policing
strategies in North
Vancouver District the
municipality’s crime rate per
100,000 people was around
the 100 mark.

Last vear it was around
77, which is one of the low-
est in B.C.

Williams Lake's rate at
the top end of the scale is
280 per 100,000 people.

But forget statistics,
because it ts difficult to
measure crimes that don’t
occur or potential crimes
that have been nipped in the
bud by a little neighbourly
candour.

Apply instead some com-
mon sense.

Take them out of unap-

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preachable prow] cars, put
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names to fices and vour
police toree gets a whole lot
easier to relate ta.

Roll some Andy of
Mayberry reruns. You start
getting the idea.

It is nota new approach.
Community policing is as
old as crime itself.

“Centres
like Edgemont
are bringing
the police back
into our
communities...”

But over the years it
has been replaced with the
cold hard impersonality of
modern technology and
mobility, which has promot-
ed the police mentality of us
versus them.

Its attractions, however,
are many, and as North
Vancouver has discovered,
community policing is worth
revisiting.

The first community
policing centre opened in
Lower Lonsdale back in
November 1993.

The second opened a
year later in Lynn Valley.

Edgemont is the first to

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eclebrate an anniversary.

Credit the event to the
contre’s gregarious
Neighbourhood Const.
Mare Bolan — better known
inthe areaas Const. Mare.

The burly head man of
the Edgemont centre is per-
semble, enthusiastic and
engaging.

He introduces his modest
Edgemont office with the
pride of a father introducing
his offSpring.

Maybe because he had a
hand in its internal design;
maybe because that is just
the way he is.

Whichever rationale you
subscribe to, Const. Bolan is
ative with enthusiasm about
being a cop walking a beat
in a local neighbourhood.

And he is a first-rate
advertisement tor the New
Age security force.

“Pee been in North
Vancouver HL years; eight of
those T was ina car (cruis-
er). Didn't meet anyone,”
says Const. Mare.

Then he got out of the
cruiser and into the commu-
nity. He doesn't drive much
any more.

His job is as much neigh-
bourhood social worker,
counsellor, conciliator, back-
yard dispute mediator as it is
policeman.

More specifically he is a
part of the community not
apart from it.

He is visible; he is trust-
ed; and he is known.

His office is as far from a
chill place of bureaucratic
impersonality as the local
grocer — a place where you
are a neighbour not a num-
ber.

It promotes interaction
and community involve-
ment. Along with a police-
man walking foot patrols in

the Edgemont area. it helps
remove the perception that
the police are an occupying
army.

Difficult to measure
whether the conversation
with Const. Mare last week
about the noisy neighbour
or the ercep speeding on a
neighbourhood street
helped head off more seri-
ous trouble.

But common sense says
It'S se,

Const. Mare is notin
town to paper the place with
parking tickets and execute
bylaws to the letter of the
law,

Thar would not be
productive community
policing nor would it mine
the common sense, sidewalk
judgment: grounded aspects
of the neighbourhood
approach.

His job is to be out and
about. Visible and accessi-
ble. Reasonable and respon-
sive.

The Edgemene centre
currendy fields about 400
telephone calls per month
and handles another 300
walk-in inquiries; its wo
officers (Const. Art Maye
currently works alongside
Bolan) respond to about
100 complaints per month
-— $0% of which are assist-
general public complaints
(graffiti, speeding, noise,
burglar alarms going off,
ete.)

Small potatoes, vou say?

They might be — unless
they are happening on your
street. Then they are much
larger potatoes.

North Vancouver
District's crime prevention
program was spearheaded in
199] by former North

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