John Bkila
News Reporter

Lakeshore hosted a Toronto Police Services mentoring session  to recruit more women to law enforcement careers.

“We’re pioneers in this type of outreach in that these sessions are geared solely towards women as potential applicants to our service,” said Staff Sgt. Riyaz Hussein, who is in charge of recruiting for the force.

The session, held last weekend, was the fourth Toronto Police have held for women at Lakeshore.

“Last year we hired approximately 70 women,” said Hussein. “So we’re just continuing with our success of getting some great applicants out of sessions like these.”

During the first part of the session, women were given general information concerning the practical aspects of the requirements of joining Toronto Police, what the testing is likely to be and what the overall application process is like.

“This is what we conduct in our police headquarters twice a month,” said Hussein. “In this instance, we’ve brought it into the community and tailor-made this one just for women.”

The second part of the session showed what they could expect during the physical testing portion of the application process. It included an obstacle course and a 3.2 kilometre shuttle run.

Hussein promoted the unique value of the session, “Let’s face it, traditionally policing has not been an occupation that has been regarded as oriented towards women,” he said. “We want to encourage policing as a viable career for women and that’s something we’ve been progressive in doing.”

Of the 24 women who attended the session, few were from Lakeshore’s Police Foundations Program.

“Because of the nature of our program, students are already aware of the fitness testing and selection process, so they don’t usually attend,” said Henri Berube, co-ordinator of the program.

The partnership between Toronto Police and Humber is evident. “I refer students who excel in the program to the staff sergeant, who then get assigned to a recruiter,” Berube said.

Hussein said while other police services have tried to run sessions like these, they have only been successful in Toronto.

In the last two years, the staff sergeant said they hired more female police recruits than any other municipal service in all of Canada.

“We’re very progressive with our recruiting methods,” said Hussein. “We’re out there within the community looking for the best and the brightest, rather than waiting for them to come to us.”