Choose a career with police

Page 5

Aboriginal history is filled with misunderstanding and mistrust between Native people and the police. The stereotypical picture is the guy in a car who arrives when there's trouble, applies a Band-Aid solution and leaves. This is an image Const. Daryl Mahoney is working to change.

Mahoney is Metis, his mother being from the Key First Nation in Norquay, Sask.

With 15 years in the Edmonton Police Service, Mahoney seems ideally suited to his job as Aboriginal liaison and recruitment officer. Besides the standard departmental training in Aboriginal issues, he has had extensive training in Ottawa in tribal land claims, family violence issues, and Aboriginal history, including residential schools and the conflicts with the Northwest Mounted Police and the Catholic Church.

He works with a team of Aboriginal liaison officers to help smooth over misunderstandings and prejudices between Natives and non-Natives, as well as dealing with spiritual and cultural differences. He is also a direct pipeline for Aboriginal problems and concerns to the police service, so that there is no "that's not my department" shuffling; people from the Aboriginal community can simply tell Mahoney their concern, and he'll either deal with it, or bring the problem to the appropriate person.

As a recruitment officer, he's also looking for the next generation of police officers. Close to half the Edmonton Police Service is up for retirement in the next five years, so opportunities for employment have never been better. Mahoney would like to see young Aboriginal people take up that challenge.

The strong sense of community and community service usually found in Aboriginal young people is just what Mahoney is looking for, and why he wants them to consider police work as a possible career.

"There are 107 different jobs in the police service; the guy in the car is just one of them," said Mahoney.

The Edmonton Police Service emphasizes community policing and runs many programs. There is the Success by Six program that works with disadvantaged inner-city children, the Wise Owls program that deals with elder abuse, the DARE program that works with young people to help prevent drug and alcohol abuse, and everything in between.

Mahoney's message to the Aboriginal community is that a community-minded police officer can spend most of his career working to help people, rather than driving around and arresting them.

The officer wants to see old stereotypes left behind and he wants people to know that Const. Mahoney is just as much a part of the Aboriginal community as is Daryl Mahoney. He hopes that Aboriginal young people will see they can choose the police service as a career without compromising their Aboriginal identity.