Okay, okay, it’s starting to seem like I’m picking on the Winnipeg Police Service. But I can’t resist pointing out that they are reaping what they sowed in their current PR battle about the case of the stolen camera card. A local man is accusing the police of confiscating his camera’s memory card after he refused to stop taking photos of a police takedown of a couple of ne’er-do-wells.

After the police service’s recent display of selective memory (what many have called dishonesty) on the witness stand at the Taman Inquiry, is it really a surprise to see the service is having a hard time getting people to believe its side of the story? (Police say they didn’t take the memory card.) This is how credibility affects performance of organizations. This crisis of confidence is far from over for the police and that is a crying shame because most of the cops I’ve met have been straight-up ‘good guys’ trying to do what’s right for our community.

Sound public relations is rooted in credibility and trust. If they’re missing, it doesn’t matter what you say… no one is going to believe you.

The public portion of the Taman inquiry is finally at an end. That is sure to come as a relief for both Winnipeg and East St. Paul police services whose members’ actions and testimony gave them each rather large and ugly black eyes. I refer to the chain of officers who took the stand and incredulously claimed no memory of the night’s events leading up to that terrible collision that saw Derek Harvey-Zenk kill Crystal Taman after a night of drinking and partying with other officers.

Worse still there have been whispers that the East St. Paul’s police service deliberately botched the investigation, allowing former Winnipeg officer Harvey-Zenk (a colleague of the St. Andrew’s chief) to walk away with only house arrest.

We’ve heard complaints that Harvey-Zenk’s colleagues (and fellow party-goers) have been unfairly tarred. People who believe that haven’t been paying attention; these officers made their beds and now they have to lie in them. Police officers who claim no memory of details of events like these are, in my opinion, either completely incompetent or lying.

A lot needs to be done from a crisis communications and public relations perspective. Police forces need credibility to exercise their authority. The public has to believe that police officers will act fairly and serve justice even if the criminals happen to be people of power or fellow officers. I’d be tempted to sack several of these officers because they have failed to live up to the honourable standards which we expect. If they can’t be sacked, they should be severely reprimanded. It wouldn’t be out of line to hold them in rank for the rest of their careers.

I was encouraged to hear that the Rural Municipality of East St. Paul offered an apology to the Taman family for what was clearly an incompetent investigation. That action shows the RM council understands how awful people perceive this case. I’ve not heard the same from the City of Winnipeg or its police service. Our civic leaders and police chief need to address this credibility gap immediately or things will get worse for the police. If nothing is done, then everyone will assume it’s just business as usual and our collective trust in our police service will continue to erode.

As I wrote before, this is both a management issue for the police (they need to execute on policies) and a communications issue. It’s not enough to do something, you have to be seen to be doing it.

Adam Dooley.

Having just returned from a little holiday which saw my wife and I hassled, inconvenienced and needlessly delayed at four separate airports, I think the time has come to complain a little more loudly about just how awful airport security has become.

And before anyone pipes and says “what about 9/11?”, let me ask you: do you actually feel safer because my shoes were x-rayed? Is US Homeland Security really doing an effective job when I have to get my boarding pass and passport past four - count them - four individual control points in Newark, NJ. I ask that, because it was the same check (yes, sir, that’s your boarding pass and passport all right) four times in a row. Really now, is that effective? What about the simultaneous loss to our economy (and sanity) from millions of travellers standing in lines tapping our feet?

Flying through commercial airports today is a lesson in hammer-handed policy, obscene misuse of public dollars and abysmal employee morale instead of good security. I’d like to single out the extra bitchy security guards at Toronto’s Pearson airport (at least one or two guards in Newark said please and thank you after they hassled us). At Pearson, my wife and I stood for several minutes alone in front of the all too familiar x-ray-slash-metal detector security checkpoint. Once we finally got to the front of the line, the line stopped moving. Dead. There was no activity. At all. There was a very bored and annoyed looking guard standing behind the x-ray doing nothing. (That’s not completely fair, because I think her shirt sleeve was polishing the steel counter where she lay her head). We stood there. No eye contact. No word of explanation as to why we were standing there. Nothing, except growing annoyance with this badge-toting lump and her irksome sighs.

When I finally asked if there was something wrong with the machine and whether we should move to another line, I was snapped at: “we’re searching someone’s bag, sir.” The “sir” pronounced with an extra sneer that I interpreted as a prelude to searching mine as well. ”I was only asking a question,” I countered. Meanwhile, we had about 12 feet of conveyor belt covered with carry on bags, laptop computer, mobile phone, shoes (will someone please give me a logical explanation why I have to take off my shoes? Why not my belt? Why not my pants?), etc. And we stood there and waited and waited and waited and waited until finally another snarky guard wordlessly, pressed a button to get that damned conveyor belt rolling through the x-ray.

Once through the x-ray, we were hurried and hassled with guards pushing our carry-on bags on further. For god’s sake, let me put on my shoes!

To me, these security guards are in the service industry. Would it hurt if they managed some simple politeness? Would it have killed that guard in Toronto to come over and apologize for the wait? Would she have lost her job if she’d suggested we may want to use another line?

But you don’t get that in airports today. All you get is accusing glares and threatening stares as if every security apparatchik is daring you to challenge them because they’d just love to send you to the back room on a whim. In certain places around the globe, you could bribe your way through, but that would just land you in a bigger pile of malodorous manure here.

Meanwhile, I have to wonder if all those airport employees have to go through anything remotely similar to get to work. It seems to me that the only major drug and weapons busts made at airports in recent years have been of employees working behind the scenes. Somebody should be fired over this state of affairs, but I suspect promotions have been handed out instead.

I don’t feel any safer with this kind of stupid and fake security. All I feel is abused.

Adam Dooley.