RCMP Sgt. Veronica Fox has never forgotten the racist bullying she endured at Burnaby schools in the 1980s and 1990s or the failure of authority figures to protect her – and she says that has made her a more empathetic cop.
“I never wanted to forget what it was like to be my former, externally powerless self,” she said in a recent statement to the Toronto Star newspaper.
The Star had reached out to Black police officers across Canada for a story on their perspectives amid international protests against anti-Black racism and police brutality as well as calls to defund the police.
BC RCMP published Fox’s statement in full Monday.
Racism in the schoolyard
Fox, who currently works in information management and technology at E Division headquarters in Surrey, didn’t originally specify that she’d grown up in Burnaby because she didn’t want to single out the Burnaby school district for something that had happened 25 years ago.
“My experiences are in no way indicative of how I think that things would be handled today,” she told the NOW.
Fox was born into a mixed-raced family in the ’80s and went to school in Burnaby until her high school graduation in 1998.
“Elementary school was the worst,” she said. “My mother made countless trips to the principal’s office to address the bullying; I was moved to different schools. Nothing worked.”
The first time she was called the N-word was in Grade 3 or 4, she said.
“The word was delivered by a fellow classmate with such vitriol that I was shocked,” she said. “I didn’t fight back when he spat in my face; I just took it. That one I didn’t tell my parents about.”
In Grade 6, she’d had enough, she said, when a girl in her class used the racial slur again.
Fox fought back with the worst insult she could think of – “freckly face.”
“Our teacher turned on me and reprimanded me in front of the entire class,” Fox said. “He later admitted he’d heard the racial slur but had decreed that I should learn to keep silent and accept such abuse.”
Such experiences with authority figures who “chose to abandon their responsibilities invested in that authority” were a cautionary lesson to Fox when she joined the RCMP, she said.
“For the first time in my life, I came to truly understand what it means to hold power,” she said. “I was suddenly granted the ability to take away someone’s liberty and the responsibility to utilize appropriate force. I took this very seriously.”
Torn
When it comes to the ongoing worldwide protests, sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn. on May 25, Fox says she’s torn.
Having been on the receiving end of racism all of her life, she said she identifies with the public “who are angry and yearning for change,” but she also identifies with police officers “who are doing good work in a dangerous and difficult job every day on behalf of their communities.”
Ultimately, for Fox, racism is not just a police problem.
“Yes, police hold power, but so too do our lawyers, judges, teachers and principals,” she said. “The bottom line is that our current circumstances are not just a policing issue. They are an issue of our classrooms and halls of justice; they are an issue of the executive boardroom and the bank or grocery store around the corner from your home. We all carry a responsibility to contribute to the interests of community welfare. It begins with openness, acceptance, kindness, and dialogue.”
Fox said she got some of the latter at Burnaby schools too and can still remember the names of all the teachers who were kind to her.
And as for her own experiences with police officers in her schools, she said she was surprised by recent comments from a current Black student who said school liaison officers make her uneasy.
“Growing up, my experience was not that it was going to be the police officer who was going to make me feel uncomfortable or unwelcome,” she said. “It was more likely to be my peers. That’s not to say that was my experience all the time, but I was more likely to be discriminated against by my fellow students, so, for me, seeing (the school liaison officer) there, actually gave me a sense of safety and security.”
Continually evolving
When asked if she has ever experienced racism inside the RCMP, Fox said no member of the force has ever called her the N-word, but members of the public have.
“Much of the racism that I’ve ever experienced has been in the community, even as a police officer,” she said. “I can be wearing the uniform or I may not be wearing the uniform, and I experience discrimination from members of the community, everything from name-calling to being followed around a store off duty, and members of the public who like to remind me that they feel I’m a product of affirmative action.”
As an organization, the RCMP is continually evolving, according to Fox.
She believes a diverse force that reflects the community is an important way for any police agency to create the trust and get the buy-in they need to be effective.
To make that happen, police need to be out in the community, according to Fox.
“I try to be a good role model because I’ve seen it,” she said. “I’ve seen people see me in the community, young children that look like me, and they’re looking at me like, ‘Oh, I’ve not seen this before’ or ‘I can do that too one day,’ and that really makes me feel good, and then hopefully that will help my organization in the future too.”
Policing theory
In Fox’s statement to the Toronto Star, she referenced Sir Robert Peel’s idea of policing.
Regarded as the father of modern policing, the 19th c
entury English politician is often quoted as having said, “The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
Fox said the training at the RCMP is well regarded worldwide.
As an academic, though, with a bachelor’s degree in communications and sociology, a master’s in leadership and a doctorate in policing security, she said she wouldn’t mind seeing more emphasis on policing theory.
“People worry about that, though, because they want a police officer who’s going to be able to turn up and take care of a tactical situation,” she said.
Fox said the overt racism she experienced as a child has “simmered down to the under-the-surface kind in adulthood.”
“The thing is, pots left to simmer periodically boil over, as we have recently witnessed,” she said. “My hope is that when the dust settles following this recent flashpoint, that people do not easily forget their current feelings of unease, but that they instead use those feelings to change our society for the better.”
