Police story: This job is as exciting as it gets

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Police Constable George Lawson grew up wanting to follow in his father's footsteps as a commercial fisherman based in his Tsimshian First Nation village of Port Simpson, B.C. Somewhere along the way though, he realized fishing may not be "the way to go" and focused on a career in policing. Now Constable Lawson is a 10-year veteran of the Vancouver Police Department.

"It's one of the more exciting careers I can think of," Lawson said. "It's so diversified that every couple of years it's almost like you've got yourself a new job, as you make a shift to a new unit every couple of years. There's so many different squads here, like marine squad, mounted squad, drug squad, strike force, Native liaison, school liaison, youth squad."

He first started at the department in 1990 as a 35-year-old-rookie.

"When I first got on this job I used to say 'I can't believe they pay us to have this kind of fun out here.'"

Initially he wanted to enter the RCMP, but its policy of putting recruits into different communities around the country, away from their home turf, and moving them every so often didn't appeal to the family man. After walking the beat for four years in Vancouver's famous Downtown Eastside, which Lawson refers to as "skidrow", he was assigned to the Native liaison program.

"People often ask me, how was I greeted by the people I met on the beat there-say, when our beat took us bar-hopping or walking these mean streets? Actually, the interaction was very positive. Before, I had thought our people would see me in a negative light as a police officer, as if I was a traitor or a sell-out. But it never came to that. People came up to me and shook my hand and told me they were glad to see one of the brothers in the uniform."

Now, Constable Lawson has been assigned to community policing duty at Vancouver's Musqueam First Nation.

"Doing community policing, it is a very specific group, dealing with specific problems and hopefully coming up with some recommendations on how to correct problems within that community. It's a lot of fun."

The Vancouver Police Department has 21 First Nations police officers; six are women.

Lawson is blunt about Native people entering police work.

"It's not the easiest thing to convince our people to look at policing as a career," Lawson said, "because of the background of historic relations we've had with authority figures or governmental institutions. It is not something that's going to go away too quickly. But I think the more this is openly discussed, the better for all of us. It may not be an issue with the potential recruit we're talking with, but with their family and community. So the family and community has to get past that bias, has to be able to accept their sons and daughters or nieces and nephews as authority figures themselves, despite the black history that went before."

Lawson said a potential recruit to policing does not necessarily need a law education and should not let youthful offences hold them back from applying. So what qualities does a First Nation person need?

"Assertiveness is one of them. When you're dealing with enforcement of the law, you have got to be able to make a decision right now and be capable of acting on it. You've also got to be able to speak well, to communicate well, be comfortable with people. I always tell people, if you want to come into this job the best thing you could do is treat people the way you want to be treated, and you'll go far."

To every job there is a downside and an upside. Lawson asserts that for him there is no downside to policing. And on the upside... "the excitement in this job is what is appealing to me. It would be exciting to a young person as well. It is not what you might expect. It's not really as dangerous as it's made out to be. It's only as dangerous as you make it yourself. You're in charge of your own safety while you're in this position."

After 10 years in uniform, Lawson still projects enthusiasm about policing "It's been a great career. And it's not over. I still have another 12-13 years to go. I'm only halfway through experiencing some of the different places that I can go work. I'm enjoying myself."

And what is Constable Lawson's favorite TV cop show? "Law & Order. It is probably closest to the truth of any one of the cop shows out there, besides NYPD Blue-it's not bad as well. I don't watch the reality cop shows. They're all like watching bloopers."