We have a problem with cops running the plates of attractive women | Opinion

Ottawa police Chief Eric Stubbs Photo by JULIE OLIVER /Postmedia

Article content

It’s easy to feel discouraged about the sheer amount of sexual misconduct and sex crime in this city, but I think we’re on the right path by tackling it head-on and naming the problem clearly and loudly.

Article content

The Ottawa Police Service conducted a “John sting” operation in earlier in June targeting people seeking paid sexual services from minors. The operation took four months to plan and was conducted over a few days during which an undercover female officer advertised herself as an 18-year-old sex worker.

Article content

Article content

Article content

Radio-Canada published an interview with the officer in question, Sgt. Amanda Larche (blurring her face for obvious reasons) and she said when the ad ran, the phone didn’t stop ringing. Clearly, youth appeals in this business. Of course, 18 years old is old enough to engage in it, at least according to our criminal law regime.

Article content

Once contact was established with a prospective client, she would reveal that she was younger than 18 and her team was flabbergasted by how this news did not appear to make potential clients hesitate. The result: 11 people arrested and 26 charges laid.

Article content

What’s encouraging in this otherwise dreadful story is that the OPS is finally going after clients, not just pimps. This was the first such sting operation in a decade, and I would encourage them to do more because, as Larche herself says, if there wasn’t demand for sex work, there wouldn’t be pimps trafficking women and girls.

Article content

Of course, we can’t talk about this kind of sex crime without laying into the police force for its atrocious record on policing sexual misconduct within its own ranks. There is reason to hope there, too. Including the first public, in-person meeting of the Ottawa Police Services Board in over three years that resulted in pressure on OPS to report on its progress at least quarterly. Which is good, as far as it goes. But it is a far cry from fixing the problem.

Article content

Article content

After five separate reviews within 10 years failed to change the culture inside the force, we’re left wondering exactly how hard OPS leadership is looking into the issue. We still have huge problems with allegations of intimate partner violence, sexual misconduct and/or harassment at work, and cops running the plates of women they find attractive to seek out dates with them.

Article content

Article content

As OPS Chief Eric Stubbs said in a video message sent to his officers in May, some of them, “seeing a woman at a coffee shop, coming out of a gym, driving next to them, getting their license plates and running them on the system.” Essentially turning police databases into “their own way to meet women.”

Article content

In case it needs saying, none of this is legal. So why is it still so depressingly prevalent within the ranks for the very people we trust with chasing criminals and putting them away?

Article content

Stubbs, in a CBC interview, said that solving this problem is gnarly. “If there was a program that existed, we’d all be doing it,” he said. And I want to scream: It’s just the law, as other workplaces manage not to break so routinely. What is it about the culture of the outfit you’re directing that, evidently, tells officers sexual misconduct is tolerated? How about fixing that?

Article content

Many people who work in the space are understandably sceptical about the OPS saying it’s working on the problem.

Article content

I am going to choose to believe that with continued and sustained public pressure, and by naming the problem clearly every single time we encounter it, that police leadership won’t have a choice but to change their culture and behave like the rest of us are expected to.

Article content

Article content