Incoming Cobourg Police Chief Paul VandeGraaf immediately ordered a “systems review” after a camper raised concerns over the role of Auxiliary Officers with the Cobourg Police Service.
David Toulmin is a resident of Cobourg, but enjoys bringing his trailer to Victoria Park Campground.
On Sunday, August 4, 2019 Toulmin and his family including grandchildren were at his trailer along the board walk at the Victoria Park Campground.
While Toulmin was outside he noticed four adult women smoking cigarettes and marijuana while sitting on the board walk just a few feet from his trailer.
Which is in contravention to the by-law of smoking in parks or on the beach.
“I watched it and observed it,” said Toulmin.
“Then two auxiliary police officers came by and I thought, now this will be rectified. But they continued to walk and it seemed to me they looked the other way.”
“It seems to me that not all the rules are being followed and clearly being missed by some of the auxiliary police officers.”
What made things even worse, was after they were done, “they just threw it right onto the beach along with their cigarette butts.”
“We commented our grand kids would be playing their shortly and they just shrugged their shoulders and walked away.”
Toulmin said since the auxiliary officers could very easily see it and smell it they could have done something.
“But it seemed to me that they just ignored it and kept on walking.”
Today’s Northumberland contacted incoming Cobourg Police Chief Paul VandeGraaf who said the auxiliary officers on the beach are, “ambassadors for the police service.
“We don’t have our volunteers necessarily get involved with enforcement.”
“If they’re riding around with a police officer on patrol and an altercation would happen – they’ve been trained on use of force so we would expect them to assist.”
Auxiliary officers are trained one night a week for 11 weeks, plus two weekends but VandeGraaf stated the auxiliary officers weren’t trained on by-laws.
VandeGraaf immediately ordered a “systems review” following the incident that Toulmin brought forward.
“What we realized is maybe we have to set structures around enforcement of by-laws.”
“The volunteers are a tremendous asset to the police service and our community, but we’re going to have a systems review and make sure we’re not in this position again.”
VandeGraaf stated in the future the auxiliaries will be educated on the cannabis legislation and by-laws and if there is a “comfort issue” approaching individuals to call for an officer.
“We don’t ask them to enforce by-laws, yet we trust them in the community as ambassadors and they’re confronted with it (by-laws).”
Author: Pete Fisher
Has been a photojournalist for over 30-years and have been honoured to win numerous awards for photography and writing over the years. Best selling author for the book Highway of Heroes - True Patriot Love
