It all started with a missed meeting.
Carolyn Orazietti was a relative newcomer to the local community policing advisory committee. She joined the committee as part of her role as the executive director of the North Road Business Improvement Association, thinking it’d be a good place to make connections that could benefit the business owners she works with.
After missing a meeting, she returned the following month to find she’d been elected secretary – and she hasn’t missed a meeting since, she told the NOW with a chuckle.
“I just stayed on it because we struck up really good working relationships,” Orazietti said.
That was six years ago.
Today, Orazietti is the chair of District 2’s community policing advisory committee, or CPAC, which is made up of about 16 members and oversees safety concerns for one of the largest areas in the city – Lougheed and the area surrounding area. She’s become an avid champion for the local RCMP, spouting the importance of fostering a relationship with police in order to help keep the city safe.
“The police have helped us out with many different initiatives, whether it’s sending advice that we then send on to the merchants or taking walking tours of the area or doing community outreach,” she said.
But it’s definitely a two-way street.
Part of her role as CPAC chair is to encourage the business owners she works with day-to-day to report crimes to the RCMP. She also acts as a go-between for the two groups, bringing concerns voiced by the business community to the CPAC meetings as well as the public safety committee meetings. (The public safety committee is the committee that oversees all four CPAC districts and brings together city councillors, community members, business owners and residents.)
The NOW recently caught up with Orazietti to hear what she had to say about safety in her area and why it’s so important to maintain a healthy working relationship with the Burnaby RMCP.
Check out her Q-and-A below:
What’s the relationship like between the Burnaby RCMP and North Road businesses?
We have quite a Korean area in our business area so … we really try and help the Korean businesses understand how policing can help them out with their concerns. Even the chief of police (Supt. Dave Critchley) and Insp. (Michael) Labossiere and Coun. (Pietro) Calendino came to our area with me last year and went door-to-door because there’s quite a boundary that we have to cross with the different kind of nationalities. … I can’t even tell you how much we rely on them. It’s community policing, so they help us educate our merchants in how to better protect themselves against crime. Not that we have a huge criminal element here, we don’t, but there is crime, we are a big city. It puts the power back in the merchants’ hands, and that’s what they want. They want to know what to look for, they want to know how to report, all that kind of stuff.
Tell me about the District 2 CPAC.
We’ve got two students from Burnaby Mountain and one from Burnaby North, and they’re really proactive, like wow, you can’t believe it, they’re doing projects, and they’re starting clubs, and they do a lot of work with the student liaison officers too, and we started a graffiti busters club at Burnaby Mountain. It just lets the students take ownership of their community, and also a really great thing too, they’re … kind of demonstrating to their peer group that police are part of a really successful, vibrant community, and if we all want to do our part, we should partner with the police and not view them as a threatening group or somebody to be feared at all, they’re partners in a safe, healthy community.
What about the rest of the CPAC members?
There are a lot of different people on CPAC, like some people head crime watch, some people head up a Block Watch, and then there’s a different kind of representative from the different neighbourhood communities that are prominent in each of the districts, and we even have people from Simon Fraser, the head of security at Simon Fraser (University), and we have Sgt. Hawthorne from the Transit Police. We started having a new guy from the CN/CP police. … We have people from Cameron Rec, Creek Side community, Stoney Creek, it’s really good, and we want people to be very vocal, like don’t feel that your problem isn’t big enough to mention, there’s no such thing.
What are some of the concerns/issues in your area?
We had a problem at one of our malls with a group of people who were very suspicious who wouldn’t go away from the mall, and so then I got in touch with the property owners and explained the problem and said, ‘We want to get security cameras up,’ and by the way the RCMP recommends to put up cameras because they can do some surveillance, but they’re teaching us, the community, how to take charge of our own property. So then, we got a great response from the property owners.
What are some of the successes you’ve had?
We started to a program called Heads Up, and it was one my husband started at his BIA in Cloverdale, and so what we do is if there’s a suspect in the area, like a person who’s suspected of breaking into cars – that’s a big, important issue for us because we want our customers to feel safe and secure here – so if there’s a problem with people doing BNEs (break-and-enters) on cars, like theft from auto and theft of auto, we want to know about it. So the police can’t send us a picture but that doesn’t prevent our own security teams from passing around pictures, and we send them to the merchants. They love it because they feel like empowered. They feel like they’re in the driver’s seat and they know who to watch for and what the problems are in the area.
Anything else?
I’ve got a little chain going with the seniors’ network. I’ve got friends who are seniors, so I’ll pass along safety tips to them, so yeah, it’s a good little network we’ve got over here in Lougheed. People are really involved, and we have a good working feedback, I have to say. We’ve got some people who’ve been on Speed Watch for 20 years. They’re so dedicated, they’re such good citizens and it’s so nice of them to step forward, they’ve kind of been spokespeople for their end of things. It’s super proactive, it’s a nice way to get involved.
What have you learned?
I just know who to phone (she laughs). Seriously. When you know who you can phone, and you know they’re going to be action-oriented, you just kind of say what you problem is, how long it’s been going on, where it is and what’s the game plan, how can you help attack that problem, and who do we need to get involved at the table, and that’s how we’ve been working it so far. I’ll just have community meetings here on my own, and we’ve called people in to discuss area concerns, and then I’ll take those to the CPAC. Just to be seen as a person who can facilitate the resolution of your problem, as a group. That’s what CPAC is, so people shouldn’t feel afraid to get involved. The community is only as strong as the relationship with the police sometimes. I think it’s really important to press that point that people are totally invited to participate.
District 2 details:
District 2: Northeast quadrant of the city
Where: Extends south from the Burrard Inlet to Highway #1, and east from Holdom Avenue to North Road.
Office: #178-9855 Austin Ave.
Phone: 604-656-3200
Hours: Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
