Jamie Graham is leaving Victoria鈥檚 police department at the end of this year, after five eventful and often controversial years as chief. He has served the department and the citizens of Victoria well.
When Graham arrived in December of 2008, the department had been labouring without a permanent chief since Paul Battershill resigned under a cloud in August of that year. The new chief brought a wealth of experience, including almost 35 years with the RCMP and six years at the helm of 91原创鈥檚 police department.
One of his priorities was to cut down on the late-night rowdiness downtown, when drunken bar patrons staggered into the streets and too often made trouble. VicPD officers clamped down on the rowdies. Controlling stupid drunks takes more than police work, and Graham worked with Mayor Dean Fortin and Coun. Charlayne Thornton-Joe on the Late Night Great Night program, which helped get partiers in buses and taxis to clear them out of town.
Fortin credits Graham with making the downtown core a safer and more enjoyable place to be at night.
Fortin also gives the chief credit for making the whole city safer, pointing to a 26 per cent drop in Victoria鈥檚 crime-severity index, as compiled by Statistics Canada. While crime statistics are notoriously uncertain measures, the index suggests a trend in the right direction.
Crime rates generally are going down, so no chief can claim credit for every improvement, but between 2009 and 2011, the raw number of offences in Victoria also went down, including crimes against persons, crimes against property and traffic offences.
For the department, Graham brought stability after a time of tremendous upheaval. Battershill had been suspended for months, without public explanation, before he finally resigned over an affair with a lawyer. Senior inspectors had brought allegations of misconduct against the former chief, so when Graham arrived, the force was deeply divided.
When he took over, he said: 鈥淓verywhere I鈥檝e been before I seem to arrive to places where there鈥檚 morale issues. I can tell you when I leave, morale is not an issue.鈥�
It鈥檚 hard to judge from outside whether he has succeeded this time, but he has backed his officers in controversial cases.
He has been a strong advocate of solving the fractured policing of Greater Victoria, as would any Victoria chief after a few weeks on the job. Everything loose on the southern Island rolls into the city of Victoria, and it鈥檚 VicPD鈥檚 job to sweep up the mess.
Pulling one of his officers out of the regional domestic-violence unit only underlined Graham鈥檚 contention that integrated units are a poor substitute for regional police forces. They are always at the mercy of chiefs who have to put their municipalities鈥� priorities ahead of regional ones, even when regional ones make more sense in the long run.
Graham faced some rough times in office, most of them of his own making. Few will forget the reprimand he got from the police board for leaving a loaded pistol under the seat of his car in the police garage. Or his speech crowing that an undercover officer had driven a busload of Olympic protesters to Victoria.
Speaking his mind has never been a problem for Graham, although it probably caused some headaches for his communications staff.
Running a police department will always mean controversy from time to time, and we have not always agreed with Graham鈥檚 decisions.
Nevertheless, he leaves the city and the department in good shape for his successor.
