The Barrie Police Service is over-represented by white, able-bodied males and must better reflect the community and be more diverse, a lengthy internal report has concluded.
The Barrie police department's Systemic Review of Organizational Culture and Systems noted that with a higher ratio of males to females and a white majority, its leadership does not appear representative of the community. The underrepresentation of non-male genders may be an indicator of potential barriers, the report stated.
And compared to the city’s population, its membership reflected a lower representation of racialized people.
“Historically in policing, if you look at many police services, it would be the same takeaway,” Insp. Val Gates told BarrieToday after presenting the report to the police services board on Thursday. “We are getting to a place where we’re seeing more of a diverse leadership team or a more diverse representation amongst constables and supervisors.”
The year-long review, which included internal and external focus groups, was prompted by conflicts with North American police forces in 2020, which ultimately led to a broad movement to “defund police."
Gates said the force looked at that as an opportunity to specifically examine the Barrie Police Service and its makeup by focusing on leadership, culture, disconnects, and organizational maturity.
“It is our duty to look internally to see how we can improve and take a pause and look at our makeup, address any biases that might be here that we’re not even aware of,” she said.
It examined the organizational culture, practices and procedures of the Barrie force and focused on identifying any areas of improvement and its engagement with racialized groups as well as vulnerable populations.
Gates said the report, which recognized opportunities to improve on some processes, shows the force is ready for changes, some of which were implemented while work on the review was ongoing.
That included using inclusive language and removing biased language and images in training material, implementing diversity training, and increasing positive social media presence.
A revelation during the process, Gates added, was the amount of support that exists in the community.
“They want to be part of that change,” she said. “They show up here to help us with initiatives like sexual violence reviews.
“There’s some amazing agencies out there. And I think the big takeaway is we really need to lean on them more. We need to include them in some of our decision-making. We need to develop initiatives that they lead and we assist with," Gates added.
The report suggested an plan and a timeline be drafted to assign actions to its leadership in order to implement change. That includes a human resources focus on more diverse communities and putting recruiting efforts on younger populations, perhaps going into high schools.
The police department’s equity and diversion and inclusion committee has started to spread awareness around the service.
Gates said outside groups are also presenting at 'lunch and learns'.
“It’s a huge undertaking, but I think everybody is pretty excited about it,” she said.
The work will be ongoing, she added, with better gathering of demographic information and annual internal and external surveys to keep a finger on the pulse on how the police force is perceived.
