The Hamilton Police Service (HPS) is looking for ways to strengthen its relationship with local public schools.
At the Oct. 24 Police Service Board meeting, member and Ward 7 city councillor Esther Pauls made a motion to request that HPS Chief Frank Bergen “consider ways in which to advance the relationship between the Hamilton Police Service and the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.”
The motion comes just weeks after the death of a teen caught up in an altercation that escalated between two Hamilton Mountain high schools, and four years after the Hamilton District Public School Board voted to end the 26-year-old Police Liaison Program that included 11 officers who oversaw 196 schools.
The motion itself was carefully crafted, and did not suggest that the Police Liaison Program be resurrected in schools, but it was referenced in the wording submitted by Pauls, and the councillor reminisced fondly about the program. She also told the board members that her constituents have been asking for it to return in some form.
Pauls’s motion cited “an escalation in crime related to children and youth ages 12 – 17” during the five years since the Police Liaison Program ended. It also described the former program as providing “proactive policing which includes student education on important and relevant topics such as the impact and use of illegal drugs, bullying and sexting.”
The Police Liaison Program, as stated in the motion, also provided short- and long-term benefits, such as familiarization with the police and improving students’ interactions with officers.
Pauls, whose son was a liaison officer with the Halton Public School Board, provided anecdotal evidence of the program’s positive impact. “I remember going to that school and I remember all the kids playing basketball with police police officers,” she said. “And I remember how the students respected the police.”
But during discussion of the motion, board member Dr. Anjali Menezes highlighted potential impacts of returning to a program that places officers in schools, noting that “different communities have different relationships with policing.”
Dr. Menezes stressed that a decision to revisit the program must be rooted in evidence-based data, and reminded the board that it was not the police who chose to end the program.
“That was the decision that came from the school board, so it was them stating a boundary,” she said. “And to further push that boundary when we’ve been asked to leave, I think, is detrimental to forming and fostering supportive community relationships.”
Further, Menezes suggested that the boundaries set by the school board were clear, and that the motion was not a “useful or economic use of our current time and energies.”
Board chair Geordie Elms reminded members that the motion was restricted to asking the chief to consider ways to improve relationships with the school community.
“If you read the news between here and our neighbours to the east, and every other interplay and all the bad stuff that’s happening in and out and around schools in the GTHA, everybody agrees something has to be done,” he said. “It’s wrong to fault the police or anybody else on one side of this discussion or the other, and all we’re asking for the chief to do is use his good offices to look for ways that he can improve that relationship.”
Chief Bergen reiterated that the mandate of the motion will be to explore ways to advance the relationship between the service and the school board. He also noted that he has a very positive relationship with HWDSB chair Sheryl Robertson-Petrazzini.
“I absolutely welcome the motion,” he said. “I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that, in fact, we will not impose our position on a board of trustees that made a decision in June 2020.”
The motion was approved by the board, and Chief Bergen will report back with criteria in spring 2025.
