Vancouver police hire former mercenaries for 2010
VPD inches closer to Olympic goal with new recruits
David Hogben
Vancouver Sun
Friday, September 12, 2008
VANCOUVER -The Vancouver police department moved 15 recruits closer Thursday to its staffing goal for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
"Our goal is to have the department up to full deployment by the Olympics," deputy chief Bob Rolls said following Thursday's swearing-in ceremony for new recruits.
"We are looking at hiring as many as 100 additional officers next year," Rolls said. The plan is to bring the department to 1,327 sworn officers.
The 15 officers sworn in Thursday came from a variety of backgrounds and brought a wide range of skills.
Four -- Thomas Callaghan, James Embleton-Forrest, John Gravengard and Paul Lindsay -- came to the department with experience in the military or time
spent in war zones in non-military roles.
Callaghan, a helicopter pilot, travelled through Somalia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam as a logistical support worker for the United Nations.
Embleton-Forrest served as an active member of the Canadian Armed Forces Reserves through his university years and did a six-month peacekeeping
stint in the former Yugoslavia.
He also spent 12 years in the British army as a member of a parachute regiment, during which he achieved the rank of major. He was on active
duty in Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Gravengard was a member of the Naval Canadian Cadets and holds the rank of sub-lieutenant with the naval reserves.
Lindsay spent eight years as a reservist in the Canadian military and two years full-time with the B.C. regiment, during which time he reached the
rank of captain. He also served as an information officer at the brigade headquarters during a nine-month stint in Afghanistan.
Others took still other paths to their new careers as police officers.
Maria Starrs got her BSc degree from Thompson Rivers University and worked worked as a "dude wrangler" at two B.C. ranches. She also participated in the Vancouver police aboriginal cadet program.
Starrs said her experiences as a member of the aboriginal community can assist her in serving the Vancouver community, including natives.
She said her grandmother, from the Lower Nicola Band, was one of many aboriginal children taken away from their families and put in residential
schools.
"Police officers were the tools for taking children away from their families," she said of the troubled past of many native Canadians.
She said it might help some aboriginal people to know she is aware of what they have been through.
Her grandmother "did not know her family. She was taken away when she was a very young girl," Starrs said.
She said her parents, who attended Thursday's ceremony, were proud of her becoming a police officer, but would probably have preferred her to sit behind a desk in an office.
"They think it's a dangerous job," she explained.
The department's new recruits possess broad language skills.
Callaghan speaks Cantonese and Thai. Karl Dagenais is fluent in French. Arash Mazloum speaks Farsi. And Barinder Nizher is fluent in Punjabi.
Other recruits sworn in Thursday include: Kyle Dent, whose father was a police officer and his mother a police nurse; Kory Folkestad, a community
policing volunteer; Fiona Ford, captain of her hockey team and a volunteer with the Coast Guard Auxilary program; Dermot O'Boyle, who has a master's degree in information management; Nicole Roberts, with a BSc in kinesiology; Josh Staples, who studied at University College of the Fraser
Valley and worked in the automotive business; and Rachel Van Den Kerkhof, who has a certificate in the social-service worker program and was a
volunteer with the Elizabeth Fry Society.