Trailblazer happy to be close to home
She's Mission's first South Asian female officer
I had the opportunity of meeting up with new Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Joanie Sidhu. She holds the distinction of being the first South Asian female police officer to patrol the streets of Mission.
Going out on ride-alongs with members of the police are practical ways of appreciating their service.
The evening started with a quick visit to a local residence to straighten up some relationship issues with a former husband.
For the most part, it remained relatively quiet, which allowed time to get to know one of Mission's finest.
But, we did hand out one ticket and suspension to an individual, who blew over 0.05 and violated the new provincial drinking law.
During the many patrols around the city, she spoke about growing up in Abbotsford and how excited she was about getting her first posting to Mission.
"I was so happy, knowing that I was coming close to home," said Sidhu.
"Mission is a great community. I go to work everyday looking forward to seeing my co-workers." Being the only member from the South Asian community, who speaks Punjabi, she knows the importance of language barriers. Sidhu said: "Having a member from the South Asian community, it makes it much easier on staff to do a better job. It is important that everyone gets heard, no matter what the problem."
Her boss, Inspector Pat Walsh, just recently came out and celebrated Diwali in Mission.
Walsh, who has been attending this event for the last few years helped prepare the evening supper , said: "We are very pleased to have Joanie stationed here in Mission.
"Simply by virtue of being a South-Asian woman employed as a fully operational police officer, she destroys many stereotypes that perhaps still exist.
She certainly brings a much deeper cultural understanding which both aids in our overall detachment service delivery as well as broadens our own horizons internally.
"Taking in the Diwali festival last week, I can't say enough about how pleased I am to be part of the community here in Mission that celebrates diversity - diverse culture, language, dance and food."
It is part of being a healthy community and as we know, a healthy community begets a safer community, said Walsh.
Sidhu encourages people and especially females to apply to the RCMP. "It feels good knowing that I am a role model for others to pursue their lifetime dreams." One thing, became evidently clear; being a cop in Mission would be difficult task. I simply know too many people. She and I both agreed.
I had the opportunity to speak with Abbotsford Police Deputy Chief Const., Rick Lucy about some diversity issues in his department.
He said: "At the Abbotsford Police Department we are committed to our mission of making Abbotsford the safest city in British Columbia. We understand that we cannot be successful with our mission on our own, and that we must be partnered with the community."
He outlined various strategies to have his organization more representative of the community.
Lucy said: "A current example of this can be seen in a target we have set to hire 50 per cent of our police recruits from the Indo-Canadian community. We are pleased to realize some success from these efforts, having recently added a couple more officers from the Indo-Canadian community, including the department's first turban wearing officer Harvinder Mangat."
Steps such as this see us heading in a vital and proper direction with respect to diversity in our organization, said Lucy.
- Ken Herar is a columnist with the Abbotsford-Mission Times. Contact him at: kenherar@gmail.com.
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