Chief of Police Mike Osborne
Mike has a long resume - he's served on the Police Services of Listowel, Elliott Lake and Midland where he was the Inspector of Operations for 8 years. He's worked with the Criminal Investigations Branch and has trained frontline officers. He's a member of the Chiefs of Police of Ontario and is the Director of Region 3 and he works with the Sicmoe County Police Authority. He volunteers extensively and has been recognized with many awards for his achievements.
Mike recognizes that Midland has many challenges - it's a low income, low education area with a high proportion of the population suffering from mental and physical health problems due to our proximity to the jail and mental health centre. The country as a whole is also experiencing a change in crime trends - the move to cyber crime and our population of seniors are a particular target. Midland also has a high level of social housing.
Mike says the luck of a person's birth plays a huge role in their development - the better an individual's education, the better off a family is, the less likely they are to commit crimes. The more literate, the more parental involvement, the better the role models, the better off a child will be throughout its life.
The Midland Service was founded in 1890 and it's aims are to hire caring officers, train the members to respect the public, partner with the community, understand its challenges and respons to concerns while showing pride in its work. They are under constant pressure to adapt to change and incorporate new technologies. He says people like the members of Rotary are part of their work. It's not how many officers there are, it's about the number of people working towards a better community. Efforts of service clubs, like Rotary and its Party on the Dock not only raise money, they help people change their perspective and fill their time. Members of the service volunteer at the Party and feel it's an amazing project.
Prevention also plays a role - make an environment that discourages crime through security, alarms and cameras and environmental design, using landscape and lighting to assist oversight. The Service continually tries to raise awareness through its Lock it or Lose it campaing, public speaking, training store staff and creating a prescription drop off centre to reduce the experimentation that occurs when out of date prescriptions are left lying around. They recognize the Service has a role in developing youth and helping those with challenges and they are using technologies like social networkds and also a crime plotting software that was written in house by Bill Gordon and which is being adopted by other services. It has resulted in a modified patrol schedule and offenses have dropped faster than the Provincial average.
The Budget for 2013 is still not finalized and will represent an increase this year but Mike pointed out that the average increase over five years has been 1.675%.
In answer to questions, Mike said that the Outreach program was initially supported by the Police and is very effective in offering insight to the the people on the street. Rotary's help with supplying T-shirts for youth programs, reducing graffiti etc. is gratefully recognized. He says there are drugs everywhere but we shouldn't forget that anyone can become addicted, especially to painkillers, and the Service has 2 officers on the problem full times and there is a Community Services officer working in the schools.