Leave Policing To The Trained Police

This release below creates more questions than answers.

The City of Ottawa spends tens of millions of dollars on the Ottawa Police Service to provide intervention very similar to these so-called night ambassadors. The police are trained and equipped to deal with these situations. For $35,000, how much training are these night ambassadors receiving? Enough to deal with problems in the Byward Market?

It sounds as though the night ambassadors might be more likely to be thrust into a difficult situation in the Byward Market than the people they are trying to help.

If you’ve been keeping up with the news over the past few years, you know that the market has been plagued by shootings and other forms of violence. Now you have people with $35,000 worth of training and an unknown number of ambassadors from this release to deal with “bystander intervention and de-escalation.” Intervening in a situation of many  kinds is asking for trouble.

And if the people writing this release cannot tell readers who, what, when, where, why, how and how much (the basics to good writing) in any kind of cogent form, just what kind of training are these people receiving before they intervene into a situation? The police spend a lifetime learning how to deal with these problems and, sometimes even with this training, things don’t turn out so well.

Let’s leave nighttime intervention to the people who are trained to deal with it.

This is dangerous work in a sometimes dangerous place.

Ken Gray

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Thanks to a contribution of $35,000 from the City of Ottawa’s Nightlife Office, the ByWard Market District Authority is launching a Night Ambassadors pilot program to improve community safety and visitor outreach during the evening and early morning hours in the ByWard Market.

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This is a release from the City of Ottawa:

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Starting June 27 until early November, the Night Ambassadors will be in the Market on Fridays and Saturdays from 9:30 pm to 4 am. Providing additional eyes on the street, the Night Ambassadors will enhance community safety and wellbeing by:

• Practising bystander intervention and de-escalation
• Helping patrons and employees find a safe ride home
• Connecting people with emergency and social services
• Supporting patrons to charge phones and access essentials such as first aid and water.

The ByWard Market Night Ambassador pilot program was inspired by successful night ambassador programs in other Canadian cities like Vancouver and Montreal. It is just one of the steps the City is taking to ensure the ByWard Market District is a safe, welcoming space for everyone.

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