RCMP Staff Sgt. Jerry Nutbrown brings you behind the scenes with a serious of columns taking you behind police work and how it’s done in our community. If you have a question you think needs to be answered in Behind the Bison, send it to admin@borderpulse.ca and we will be sure to share it with him.
Policing is not just law and order because most officers experience many personal connections. Within
our duties and various postings, we come across people I describe as being characters. My first posting
in northern Manitoba is where I met most of my ‘characters’.
At my posting I got know many people who were our regulars. By this I mean that we interacted with
them on a near daily basis and many times this was due arresting them for being intoxicated in public.
Three of these characters I will call DD, Jim and C.
Addictions were, and still are, a reality of that community and many times we patrolled in the winter
specifically to ensure none of them were left out in the cold. Most of these characters had homes to go
to or at times were from outlying communities and came into town once and while but would end up
staying some nights in our cells. Socializing at chip-in corner brought them downtown.
These harmless folks were usually happy-go-lucky and very good to deal with. They realized we had a
job to do, and we understood they had personal struggles and so began our relationships.
I always kept a pack of cigarettes in my duty bags because cigarettes would often make our job easier. C
was a fellow that depending on the amount he drank could get a bit testy when we would arrest him as
he knew he was sleeping in cells that night. When his mood was not so cooperative, the sighting of a
cigarette pack would calm him down as I’d light him a smoke and let him enjoy that before putting him
in the backseat for the ride to the detachment.
One night myself and my partner were going to get a coffee, and we spotted Jim, DD and C quite
obviously intoxicated. After picking them up, so we could still get our coffees, we offered to buy them a
coffee. A quick zip through the driver-thru (made famous by Rick Mercer) and we were on our way back
to cells with our characters.
I would run into some characters while off duty while with my family and they all became familiar with
each other. Our kids would point them out by name and on many occasions, we would buy them a lunch
from the Northern Store or Burger King. The characters meant something to us which went well beyond
policing and the laws coming with that.
You never knew where a conversation with one of these characters would go but it was always
enjoyable listening to their stories regardless of their intoxication.
To me, characters are very much a policing career highlight as they became something more than
acquaintances and much like friends. Sadly, since I transferred out of Manitoba some 17 years ago both
Jim and DD have died but, in my memory, it isn’t their arrests I recall but rather them as characters that
enriched my policing time in northern Manitoba.
Read more: Behind the Bison: Drug Overdoses
