Safety - a campaign promise

 Safety has a peculiar resonance in contemporary urban politics. For some conservative leaning folks safety is about protecting their property and their children from 'influences' they don't like. 

[Consider] the slogan of safety in schools.    Most of us we think this means something like ensuring no child is bullied, that schools are earthquake proof, and/or that it implies a focus on issues of emergency preparedness. However, this is also a coded phrase that speaks to a conservative anti-LGBTQ movement intensely opposed to any kind of non-heteronormative sexual orientation or gender identity. (Menzies, Oct. 2018).

In the current UNA elections safety has popped up in almost every campaign letter and communication from candidates (not all, but most). A discouragingly strong minority of occurrences reference the conservative 'protect my property' variant of safety. Some, however focus on a more progressive focus that might be called a community wellbeing approach.

Fei Liu, for example, very carefully argues that "a safe community should be inclusive without out prejudice and hate."  Eagle Glassheim discusses safety in the context of earthquake preparedness and climate change induced wildfires in Pacific Spirit Park.   This approach to safety centers the wellbeing of all people living in our neighbourhoods.

The conservative mode of safety reconceptualizes threats to wellbeing as something caused thieves at night, unfamiliar strangers, or identities that challenge parental authority.  The solutions to these types of threats typically involves increased police presence and excluding people thought to be strange and dangerous. 

Three candidates in the current election have explicitly called for increased policing and more money being spent on the local RCMP; this in an historical moment wherein many people are calling for a defunding of police or a retasking of police funding to more community wellbeing focussed activities. 

Tony Cheng opened his campaign by citing examples of violent crime in Alberta and followed up by promising to lobby for more RCMP funding.  AMS supported candidates Mitchell Proust and Sofia Ngieng have both promised to lobby for more police presence on campus in order to improve community safety.  Erin Co, another student candidate, is less explicit on an expanded police presence but also picks up the conservative safety theme by advocating to The Ubyssey "to make a working group and to liaise between the RCMP and UBC to ensure the overall safety of all community members." 

A lot of research shows that community safety isn't gained by increased police presence. For the fiscally concerned, there are cheaper ways than spending on policing to improve community safety.  In fact, the best intervention lies in preemptive community planning - something that is currently underway and already in existence in the residential neighbourhood plans.  Let's hope that those candidates who have called for spending more money increasing police and enforcement reconsider their promises. If they get elected this is one promise I hope they break - not because they are typical promise-breaking politicians, but because they will have reflected on the facts and have realized they are wrong to demand more police.

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Editors Note, Nov. 20/21: Proust and Ngieng clarified/reversed their position on expanding police presence during the All Candidates Forum by saying they meant community enforcement, not more police officers.