Morning Radio

Awoke to a great string of Laura Lynch interviews on CBC Vancouver's Early Edition this morning. First up, Vancouver Police Union President Ralph Kaisers was asked why he is against having the Vancouver Police Department's budget cut, even by one-percent. Following that, Elevate Inclusion Strategies' Natasha Tony (note: no business title, ergo no hierarchies?) spoke of her company's emphasis on intersectionality when facilitating discussions on public safety (I could have said "policing" here, but those days are over, thankfully). Finally, City Councillor Pete Fry.

Below is an exchange between Lynch and VPU President Kaisers that I thought revealing (from 4:04 -).

Laura Lynch: The last time the police department asked for an increase the police chief Adam Palmer told the CBC that the VPD services went well beyond law enforcement, much of the work focusing on mental health, missing people, addiction issues, homelessness. How good a job do you think police are doing at handling those issues?

Ralph Kaisers: No, I think the reality of this is we actually do a really good job, because we're very fortunate here in Vancouver: our members are well-educated; they're well-trained; we do get a lot of training in all of those aspects of social sciences because, again, our job has now taken on a lot of those things that have been down-streamed from government over many years.

LL: I guess that's part of the debate, though, about de-funding is that people are now saying, Take those responsibilities out of the police's hands, it's not really a police issue, and give them to social services -- fund those back up. What do you say to that?

RK: Well, that's a discussion that we'll have to have, and it's certainly something that I predict we're going to have, but again I don't think that it should be on the heels of a political agenda to happen over night. If we're gonna have that discussion--

LL:  What political agenda?

RK: Uh, and again, some of our city councillors have different ideas as to what the priorities of the city has to be and public safety doesn't seem to be one of them...