Letters Jun 30, 2006 – 2:28 pm EDT

Bylaw officers: tough job, little support

By NUNATSIAQ NEWS

Community residents reach for their phones pretty quickly when they want their local bylaw officer (or whatever other names they go by in each community). Whether it be loose dogs, noisy kids, vandals, speeders or similar things, they depend on their bylaw officer for a rapid response.

This brings up many questions, that until now, have not been properly thought out.

In many communities the bylaw officer works in an impossible situation with little back-up or protection. Often they are expected to handle far more than what their job description outlines and place themselves in dangerous situations where people are drunk and abusive, where they lack protective equipment and are expected to restore order under very challenging conditions.

When this kind of job was first thought up, little thinking went into how a person is supposed to deal with the things that can crop up in a community.

We all know that communities now are becoming more dangerous. Drunks with loaded guns. Frustrated people who don’t care who they hurt. Frightened families and mounting abuse. While the RCMP is highly trained and more highly paid, with proper equipment and working conditions, the bylaw officer has none of these things — yet is often expected to act in the same manner as the police.

This is not fair to the individual who may often be placed in risky situations. No thought has been given to this and little training, no equipment and usually, no plan exists to support and protect this person.

Bylaw officers are also at the mercy of their hamlet councillors, mayors and SAOs, who rarely understand the full range of the work they do. These people don’t understand the day-to-day pressures.

Often, with no support, bylaw officers are at the mercy of the politics of the hamlet council office, being drummed down under the pressure of those whose relatives get a speeding ticket, whose dog got locked up for being loose. They take a high level of abuse from within their own hamlet organization.

As a result, many have burned out or simply walked away from their jobs over the years. Many have fought to improve how things are done, to educate their SAO and council. It is also very difficult for many bylaw officers who have a mishmash of a job description that not even the hamlet, RCMP and CGS can seem to agree on.

This leaves the poor bylaw officer scratching their head at what it is they should be doing, as no one else can get their act together and ensure the training and support they need.

We know our towns are full of uptight and aggressive people these days and we expect the bylaw officer to get involved in keeping the peace — how do we expect them to put themselves on the front line of danger for poor pay, poor support, poor coordination between agencies, poor equipment and no one listening to what they are trying to communicate? Some bylaw officers are called upon to deal with awful crime scenes and suicides, without the benefit of a staff psychologist, like the RCMP.

Do councils fully understand what they are asking of their bylaw officers? I don’t think so. After all, they are on the front line out there everyday, handling big and small situations and dangerous ones too.

Don’t abandon them and throw their concerns to the wind. Think about this and take the right action to listen to what they are trying to tell you.