Get Out Of The Kitchen

"He knows how stressful it was, he chose to drink, he chose to assault officers, he chose to try to rip the gun out of the holster." Ottawa Police Chief Vern White

Every municipality and every community wants to be able to depend on the intelligent, trained professionals who make up their public security force to ensure public order and safety prevails. Police forces are comprised of people from the community which they serve. The individuals who serve as police officers are held in high regard by the community who depend upon their sense of duty to their profession to keep the public safe from harm.

When, as it happens on occasion, a police officer is found in default of his duty and the parameters of behaviour and honour assigned him through his professional persona, he is often disciplined and occasionally encouraged to leave the police force he has represented. Police officers are like any other individual within the community; some succumb to pressures and to avarice, to temptations that take them far from the call of duty to serve and protect.

These are not individuals whose judgement can any longer be trusted. When the crime that they perpetrate is severe enough to warrant a trial finding them guilty of gross misconduct the police force has little option but to remove such individuals from duty. The union representing the welfare of police generally makes an attempt to ameliorate the outcome for its accused members, pleading for leniency.

In the case of Ottawa police constable Jeffrey Gulick, with a history of drug and alcohol addiction and an inability to discipline and restrain himself - to control his temper resulting in violence, both against his wife in a situation of domestic abuse, and against his colleagues with whom there was a violent altercation when they attempted to apprehend him - there is no room to manoeuvre other than to see him leave the police force.

He has been charged with discreditable conduct under the Police Services Act, resulting from his assault on four of his fellow officers. A disciplinary hearing reviewed Constable Gulick's performance with the force's partner assault unit, and the stress associated with serving in that unit. His wife claims that working with that unit drained her husband of self control and he became abusive as a result of his stressful work environment.

But the fact was that her husband chose to work with that unit. He also, of his own volition, made an attempt to solve the stress he fell under by the misuse of drugs and alcohol. It was, similarly, a choice he made to become abusive, and to threaten the lives of fellow police officers, in a rage provoked by his own violent tendencies. This is not the kind of personality that the person on the street can trust, let alone his professional peers.

Chief Vern White is correct in denying this man the opportunity to continue in his chosen profession. Quite clearly it is not the profession that should embrace this kind of personality. To serve the public weal, he has been given the choice of either resigning, or being fired.

He is himself the architect of the choices that sit before him.