~ 20 : Terrace Review — Wednesday, J anuary 28, 1987" The first installment of this article concerning the work of the Terrace RCMP detachment ap- | peared in the Jan, 14 issue of the Terrace Review. Part I In the first half of this story, a reporter for the Terrace Review describes the arrest of a young van- dal and other events dur- ing the course of an eve- ning spent observing the work of Cst. Terry Pakenham and other men and women of the Terrace RCMP detachment. This ‘story was made possible by. the RCMP’s Ride- Along program, a@ com- munity relations provision allowing journalists to - watch law enforcement in action. After the arrest pro- cedure for the young women is finished, I am introduced to the telecom facility. and the people who operate it. The night shift is the most active time for police work, and demands on the Terrace _ telecom center are par- ticularly heavy because it acts as the sole dispatcher for the entire policing region after 6 p.m. .Buttons on an eye-level console allow operators to answer calls from Prince . Rupert, Kitimat, Stewart, the Hazeltons and rural areas surrounding those communities. A series of repeater stations forward radio. signals to patrol cars in the same areas. Pakenham is emphatic about the reliance that members place on these trained specialists, and his TERRACE — Larry Yeske from the northern Vancouver region is the new ‘officer in charge of the Terrace RCMP de- tachment. He was. transferred from the lower mainland _ to resume the post of former RCMP Inspector Ron Evans. Last month Yeske and his wife, along with their daughter, arriv- ed in Terrace. Yeske said he intends on ‘keeping control of the criminal element in this area: ‘I want to create a good environment for the law abiding citizens in Terrace.” Prior to Terrace, In- spector Yeske has worked with various police forces, He has been employed in _ Ottawa, smaller com- munities in the prairies, and Vancouver. Yeske said he's looking forward to getting to know the people of the community and working in the Northwest. The driver's seat of'a Terrace RCMP patrol car has a utilitarian design. The radio is used con- tinually, but the shotgun is seldom, if ever, withdrawn from its case. confidence in their ability to forward critical infor- mation to policemen ‘on the front line seems almost unlimited. Skill at han- dling crisis situations re- quires extensive training and experience; many detachment personnel, like supervisor Jerry Han- non, are also competent at this demanding assign- ment, —_ “LESS DESIRABLE” Back on the street, the radio dispatcher calls for a back-up unit to go to an ambulance call. The loca- tion is a few blocks away, ‘and we arrive in less than. two minutes. The ambulance driver walks up to the car and in- forms Pakenham that no help is required. .The house was locked, and a neighbor, receiving no answer to a knock on the door, looked in through the window and saw the occupant passed out on a couch and apparently not breathing. The occupant, thoroughly drunk, was awakened by persistent pounding on the door by the ambulance crew, Alive and walking around, the man may have needed any number of things, but an ambulance was not among them. As we continue moving about the rain-dampened streets, laneways, parking ‘lots and industrial yards of the city, Pakenham ex- plains that there is a limit placed on the amount of time an RCMP member can serve in a community; Terrace is termed a ‘“‘less P officer takes charge Inspector Larry Yeske, recently resumed the post of officer in charge of the Terrace RCMP Detachment. Yeske Is replacing ' Inspector Ron Evans. Photo by Daniele Barquist. -desirable’’ post by the RCMP, with a maximum of three to four years for _ anyone sent here. The of- ficial reasons are the com- munity’s distance from major urban centers and the potential for being isolated by foul weather in the winter. There appear to be other factors involv- edaswell, = Although armed rob- bery, -murder, terrorism and other violent crimes associated with large ur- ban areas are virtually ab- sent in Terrace, this locali- ty has failed to escape. from an oppressive social disease common through- out the North. ‘‘There is a large core population here of people with chronic alcohol abuse problems,”’ Pakenham states. The lack of control and responsibility over per- sonal behavior: in a relatively high percentage . of the population’ moves with a ripple effect through the entire com- munity, affecting families, friends, and. individuals who are total strangers. An entire support and counselling structure in-. volving hundreds of pro- fessionals and volunteers has come into being to ad- dress the problem, and police officers encounter its manifestations nonstop series of criminal, social and legal disorders. ‘“‘Whenever we have to | deal with a problem, it’s almost inevitable that alcohol is involved in some way or another,” Pakenham says. Another reason for fre- quent assignments, he says, is the unique social position of the police. An inherent conflict of in- terest could arise at any time in friendships if an acquaintance steps outside. the law, and periodic moves to new com- munities prevent those conflicts and relieve. stresses built up by work- ing and associating with the same co-workers over in a. long periods of time. The reverse. side of the re- posting policy is the toll it takes on personal relation-- ships and the unending series of readjustments a police officer’s family is ‘forced to go through. . -AsS we emerge from a tour of the Terrace: Co-op’s darkened parking lot, a troublesome scene: begins to unfold across the street. As if in confirma- tion of Pakenham’s earlier remarks about alcohol, a young woman-is being escorted out of the bar entrance of the Ter- race Hotel. discouragement from blank-eyed bystanders clustered around the door- way, challenge the bar manager _and return to the estab- lishment. Pakenham walks up beside her and says with some surprise, ‘‘You’re not going back in there, are you?" Far gone in in- toxication, she blurts an obscenity at him and heads for the door. ‘‘OK, -you’re .under arrest,’’ Pakenham says, and guides her by the elbow to the back seat of the car. On the way to the sta- tion he manages to discover her name, where _She lives, and her age. At the entrance to the. cellblock. she seems over- whelmed with confusion and disorientation, asking repeatedly, ‘‘Why are you doing this to me?’’ She. refuses to remove her shoes and coat, and under the resigned gaze of two civilian female staff the “way, Despite . she prepares to articles are taken off her and she's put ina cell. The procedure cannot be done with any degree of dignity, _but it’s done gently. In a nearby cell the two juvenile girls resume their taunting, and the fearful racket reverberates again down the concrete hall- ‘We're often criticized for arresting drunks,”' Pakenham says, . ‘‘but there are reasons why we - do it.’ The woman, if she ‘had attempted to force her way back into the bar, would have been charged ‘with an offense. By re- moving her before she had a chance to commit the of- fense, he has avoided lay- ing charges. The woman will spend the night in jail and be. released in the morning. She has not been booked for any crime, and both the arresting officer and the bar manager have. . ‘been _pearance.in court. spared an ap- ‘The people in a police force are a closed frater- nity, partly because they recognize that their func- tion in society sets them apart, but also in part because society shuns the objects of police attention — the criminals, the disruptors, the outcasts. We sit in our closet em- pires and grudgingly pay taxes to hire men and women to keep the danger and unpleasantness in some obscure corner of perception where we don’t have to watch it. They are ‘sceptical and often silent witnesses to problems for which. we lack the will, energy and imagination to propose constructive solu- tions. Pakenham calls it the “fortress mentality”, the psychological path of least resistance in avoiding dif- ficult and complex social problems. It’s the equiv- alent of saying, ‘‘I’m OK, Terrace police _ §tatistics — TERRACE — The November RCMP report indicates a possibility of an overall drop in the crime rate in Terrace fo 1986. a So far, as reported, the statistics showed a 21 per- cent decrease for 1986 in personal offenses as com-. pared to 1985. Property Offenses dropped about 6.5 per- cent, and all other categories except drug and traffic related offenses have indicated a decline. During November, 1986 ‘there were 125 RCMP hours of overtime at a cost of $1391.24 to the mun- - icipality. Voluntary over- time mounted to seven hours. _ and if you’ve got troubles don’t bother me with them. _ I leave the RCMP sta- tion in the early hours of the morning, Despite the feeling of having met a friendly and uniquely competent “group: of human beings, I am unable to shake the im- pression that I’ve just spent an evening being. closely observed and sized up as a suspect in some criminal act I've yet to think of or commit; the feeling is an error, a misapprehension, and a reaction to crossing a boundary into a world which, after one brief evening, I can only vague- ly understand. If having a ‘fortress mentality’ were a crime, however, the jury could be out indefinately, but in our hearts we'd all know the verdict.