Remarks by Jacques Duchesneau, C.M., President and CEO, Canadian Air Transport Security Authority

Public-Private Partnerships in Security and Law Enforcement: A Necessary Cross-Over

Seminar of the Quebec Association of Police Chiefs
Theme: “Partners in our future”

Gatineau, June 7, 2006

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Greetings, one and all!

I am very pleased to see you all and I welcome you to this seminar on public-private partnerships, which are often looked upon as necessary evils we do not really know what to do with.

During the next two days, we will be bringing you distinguished speakers with solid backgrounds in their fields. I have no doubt that they will challenge you in many ways and make you think about the best way to approach this issue of public-private partnerships.

As I was preparing my notes for today, I asked myself this fundamental question: Are Quebeckers in favour of PPPs, public-private partnerships? I have heard such strong opposition.

However, a Léger Marketing survey has shown me that Quebeckers regard such partnerships as favourable. Three-quarters of the people surveyed said, in fact, that they were in favour of “rapidly implementing public-private partnership projects in certain fields.”

According to them, these partnerships would make it possible to “discover solutions that are appropriate for current problems and for the evolution of services more quickly than the government."

This morning, I will start with a fact and a myth.

The fact is that 72% of Quebeckers find that public services are poorly managed and too costly. Policing must thus be included in this lack of satisfaction.

The myth is – and it is a persistent one – that the private sector has exclusive rights to efficiency and progress; whereas, the public sector is the epitome of all that is inefficient, awkward and outdated.

I refuse to take this road or get involved in trying to prove which of the two is the more efficient or more cost-effective.

We have witnessed too many examples – I was going to say too many scandals with disastrous consequences – to allow us to forego the need for a balanced vision.

Are police services ready for a public-private partnership?

Unarguably, today, public-private partnerships are a worldwide phenomenon. But let us be honest with ourselves and go straight to the question at hand: Are our police services ready for public-private partnerships?

Truth be told, we are still far behind in this respect. Traditionally, police officers have a tendency to trust only other police officers. They are still an extremely closed society, afraid that outsiders will meddle in their world and disturb their habits.

They come up with all kinds of arguments against opening up to the private sector, such as the risk of having their values of transparency, fairness, impartiality and respect replaced with lesser values where the end justifies the means.

My response to that is that partnerships do not, in anyway, leave the police at the mercy of the private sector. On the contrary, the police are in charge – they can impose their conditions in the contract.

 That being said, although their motivations may be different, the public and private sectors must rally around the same goal. And this goal is the common good.

Yes, policing is a public “service” whose mission it is to serve the common good and protect the population.
And yes, the private sector – the word says it all, does it not? – pursues business-oriented goals, i.e., making investments profitable.

But are the two irreconcilable?

Does it mean that the private sector has no interest in the common good and that the police have no interest in the efficient management of taxpayer money? I think not!

What we need to recognize is that the police force must not continue to be a static structure, a sacred artefact. It must evolve. They must dare to imagine new ways of doing things to improve services and reduce costs.

Currently, 75% of the collective wealth of Quebec is produced by the private sector. Three-quarters of salaried workers are in the private sector. Clearly, when we look at it that way, it is impossible to avoid a link to the private sector.

Policing cannot remain a monopoly.

I would further support my statements by reminding you that private enterprises have had to undergo continuous change over the past 20 years. Otherwise, they would never have survived the competition. They have continuously reviewed their productivity and management practices, and modernized their equipment.

Has the police world done as much soul-searching? Not really. I would even go so far as to say that the police have not adjusted to the 21st century. Its own conformist attitude is its biggest handicap.

Policing has not evolved. It is still mired in the sovereignty system of the 17th century: one land, one king.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, policing did manage to keep up with the “New Police” model, proposed by Sir Robert Peel, father of community policing. However, in the 21st century, the gains have been lost. We have become experts in counter-terrorism and, at the same time, we have once again strayed from our world. The rift widens.

Examples of common sense and evidence

An observation: citizens want more public services. They want better hospitals for better health care, better schools for better education, better police services for better protection. They aspire to newer, more functional, and efficient infrastructures that are closer to home. And what are the police doing in the meantime? They are like the proverbial ostrich, hiding their heads in the sand.

Examples:

• The police have set themselves up as experts beyond criticism on how they conduct patrols, investigations, etc. How can you make progress when you hide from view?

• Policing has become increasingly specialized, so much so that it is now very difficult to deal with computer crime, the Norbourg-type economic fraud, organized crime, drug trafficking. How can we continue to reject an association with the private sector when it can provide us with some of the resources we lack? I often say that there is a cost involved in being out of synch. The cost is to create monolithic empires.

• Another example: Quebeckers have total confidence in private enterprise when it comes to diagnostic tests, buying food, houses, cars, the people they trust their savings to, the airlines they use… And yet some people would have me believe that the police should be the only ones to protect their lives and their property? Does that make sense to you?

• One final example in this section. The State has passed regulations aimed at increasing public safety by increasing private sector involvement. Hospitals are required to report child abuse; banks are required to transport their funds in a certain way; sporting events are covered by private guards; construction companies are required to manage traffic near their sites, etc. Is this not eloquent proof that public policing and private security complement each other?

No business model

I read in the March 26th New York Times that, generally speaking, all over the world, police services do not have business models unlike health care, to mention just one example where there are performance indicators, analyses, forecasts. This is worrisome.
How is it possible?
How can structures involving thousands of people making millions of decisions each year function without a business model?

I quote the mayor of New York City, Michael R. Bloomberg, as reported in the New York Times : “But if policing is a core city enterprise, it is also an industry without a standard business model. And New York announcement raised a question every city has been asking since crime began to fall in the 1990s: How many officers are enough?”

A law professor at New York University responded: “There's no formula for that. Nobody knows what the precise proportion should be.”

One of my colleagues recently reminded me that the Toronto Police Department has had budget increases from 5% to 10% a year. And yet the citizens have not necessarily see a positive impact on the crime rate. They have the impression that they are spending more and more money, and getting nothing for it. What can we do about this?

Nine years ago, during my service with the Montreal Police Department, we made the firm decision to open up to the world by introducing the concept of Neighbourhood Policing.

With this model, which is standing the test of time, we began to improve cooperation with citizens, to listen better and to concede that the police cannot do it all alone. If we are able to open up to the world, why can we not open up to the private sector?

By cutting themselves off from the private sector, the police are only isolating themselves.

Why do the public sector police not realize that public-private contracts would enable them to undertake many of the projects that have been beyond them up to now?

Why does public policing refuse to see that, by shutting out private policing, it limits its horizons? Lately, a whole series of authors and specialists have rallied together to emphasize the numerous advantages that private policing has over public policing. They consider private policing to be preventive rather than punitive, and more skilful at influencing behaviour.

Here is a quote from their conclusions:
“ The mentality of private policing is similar to that of self-help by individuals: conciliatory rather than penal, emphasizing desistance rather than punishment, concerned with outcomes more than rules, and speedy rather than measured .”

CATSA and the private sector

You all probably know that I currently head the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), which was set up following the terrorist attacks of September 11th. You might think that here is a huge machine that is not connected with policing. You might also think that its means match its ambitions. And yet, when I joined CATSA, just a little over four years ago, it was very modest in scope.

Many of you will smile, but when I first arrived at CATSA, I was a “worst case scenario” thinker.

With terrorists, I no longer say, "That can't happen."  Rather my thinking is: “How will terrorists surprise us next?” While we live in fear of weapons of mass destruction and massive, complex, and costly disturbances, the terrorists use weapons that are astonishingly simple. While we live in fear of bacterial warfare, they learn to fly and hijack planes. So, needless to say, I am always vigilant.

I took you off on this tangent because I wanted to tell you that my “worst case scenario” mind frame quickly developed into “best case scenario”.

For me, best is not hesitating to work with collaborators outside the security sector.

For the past four years, we have hooked up with the best, period. We share skills. We look outside our own four walls! We turn to the private sector for the skills of experts, of the elite. This gives us the expertise we have neither the time nor the money to develop.

Do not forget that, year in, year out, we make 100 million decisions. That means we need a quality assurance that will not let us down.

Have you heard about our biometric card? The card gives us greater control in regulated airport areas as it allows us to confirm identities. It was not CATSA that developed this cutting edge technology. No, it was one of our private partners that shared the benefits of its dynamic research with us. Without this partnership, it would have cost taxpayers nearly $10M more to develop this unique card.

Now to our 4,000 or so screening officers. Each year, they check over 37 million passengers, over 60 million pieces of luggage and 1 million non-passengers. Maybe you did not know it, but they are technically not CATSA employees. They are linked to us by means of service contracts with private sector suppliers.

The suppliers recruit and administer them, and manage their human resource requirements. We then step in and take care of the essentials: we train, certify and supervise them. Without this public-private partnership, it would have cost us $330M for these officers. As it was, the bill came to $165M.

In fact, none of CATSA's service providers are employees. They belong to security firms.

What I would like to say to you now is that through our public-private partnerships, we ensure a reduction in costs and we accomplish our mission more effectively which is a common sense requirement and a legitimate expectation of the taxpayers.

I want to give you another example, this time not related to CATSA. A year or two ago, RCMP Sgt Scott Sheppard, an explosives removal expert, designed an explosives detonator unencumbered by metres and metres of wire. His device encrypts radio waves that detonate explosive devices.

Once Sheppard came up with the idea, who do you think got the RCMP licence to manufacture the device? Allen-Vanguard, a private sector firm. All stakeholders worked hand in hand, sharing costs equitably. This is definitely the model for future projects.

Bring in the private sector to improve the quality of service

At this point, I would like to return to our main subject. I ask again: Are our police services ready for PPPs?

There are so many avenues that could be explored. I can think of several.

Police officers study for three years at a CÉGÉP and then get further training at the Institut de police de Nicolet.

Thought: Why does a police officer who becomes a crime scene expert, who spends hours looking for clues, have to prepare his own report? Why is he required to spend his precious time doing clerical work when he could be useful in other investigations?

It seems to me that a public-private partnership initiative could be set up, whereby the police officer dictates notes over a cell phone to an employee of a company that specializes in report writing. This would cost a lot less and would optimize the use of police resources.

Another example: Currently, police officers watch inmates in cells. To my way of thinking, and I do not want to offend the unions, this task could easily be transferred to a private outfit. A security guard would be perfectly appropriate.

Do you find this to be too risky?

Yet, in many countries, police services are outsourcing with a great deal of success such things as prisoner transportation, street patrol, traffic accident investigation, electronic surveillance, crime prevention and I could go on and on.
In fact, this is a solution we must seriously consider. The police could be ten times more efficient if a large number of non-criminal matters were delegated to private outfits.

In Durban, South Africa, the public police share a communication network and a computer platform with a private security company. This company often responds to urgent calls of a criminal nature and preserves crime scenes until the public police arrive. Why not?

After all, our priority should always be efficiency and productivity. I know that the police world is capable of ingenuity. Advances have already been made in this direction.

Let us take the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. For some years now, a private sector civilian investigative assistant has been attached to every team of two or three investigators. This person, who often has university training, is in charge of logging calls, doing analyses, and locating information. I find this to be an awesome initiative.

This shows us that the partnership is much more than a subcontract relationship. There is also a relationship of trust.

This investigative assistant makes me think of the operating room context. Have you ever seen a surgeon operating alone? No, you have not. He is always surrounded by surgical assistants, nurses, and anaesthetists. It seems to me that the police should also have a number of these support teams from the private sector, of course.

The SQ has also brought a breath of fresh air into the way things are done by assigning reception to security guards instead of police officers. They in fact have all the skills required to filter risks and check the identification papers of the people that approach them. A bit of a paradox, is it not: private security protecting public security! A perfect illustration of the crossover.

More examples like this are needed.

It is a known fact that Quebeckers have the benefit of quality public services. But they also pay some of the highest taxes in North America, and the government of Quebec has one of the highest debt loads.

Might there be options that would enable our police to maintain quality of service while reducing costs?

I say there are. We just need to turn to the private sector again. Here is a possible scenario. Let us refer again to the Montreal Police Department. There are 4,257 police officers. Why not consider reducing this to 2,500 and hiring police auxiliaries? Does there really have to be two armed officers in each patrol car? I would tend to think not.

I am also more and more inclined to believe in what the military refers to as “force multiplication."

Integrating civilians in patrol duties

If you will permit me, I will now take us to England. The connection will soon become apparent.

For some time now, the British police have been perceived to be less reactive, less visible, less accessible and less involved in the community. This situation has translated into what is known as the paradox of tranquillity. I explain: between 1995 and 2003, crime dropped by 35%; yet, 65% of the population believes that crime has gone up in the past two years.

In this context, the British Ministry of the Interior began a vast police reform in 2000. Here is what they did: essentially, they put their eggs in the “Extended Police Family” basket. Who are the members of this family? Police officers, community support officers hired by the police, contract officers deployed in a neighbourhood or on a particular street and paid by the municipality, merchants, private security guards and citizens.

What this extended family does is it increases police visibility. Currently, the police devote 63.6% of their time to first line activities. The goal for 2007-2008 is 72.5%. When this goal is reached, the gain in productivity should be equivalent to hiring 12,000 new police officers.

Remember my earlier example of Quebec investigators preparing their own reports, which, to me, is a waste of their time. Clearly, the British police are way ahead of us. They have already started improving their productivity. Little by little, they are reducing bureaucracy, freeing up police officers and deploying them in first line positions, and assigning civilians to administrative positions.

I firmly believe that we would benefit from following their example.

In 2008, the British police services will consist of 60% sworn police officers, 30% support personnel and 10% community support officers.

We should perhaps contemplate also revising our ratios.

How come we in Quebec do not have any of these support officers who wear uniforms similar to police officers but have limited legal powers? They could prepare offence reports aimed at combating antisocial behaviour – such as graffiti, be deployed to traffic management, stop and hold people for a maximum of 30 minutes, which is enough time for a sworn of police officers to make it to the scene.

This is really an interesting opening. It is so interesting that many countries have set up support officer squads.
In the Netherlands, many cities have “City Guards” or “Stadswacht." In Great Britain, they have “City Stewards” or “Social Caretakers." Their main function is to be visible and alert the police in case of potential danger.

Could we not also contemplate assigning support officers to preventive patrol missions in all Quebec police forces? Imagine the effect this would have on how safe the citizens feel.

Currently, in England, support officers spend 53% of their time on patrol, compared to 23% for the police. They keep a sharp eye out all over the cities. They reassure the population and significantly reduce the fear factor, a crucial point in and of itself, but they also have an impact on the crime rate.

The Brits therefore have them to thank for the following results: car theft has declined by 25%, break-ins by 46% and theft from vehicles by 23%.

Here again, we can see that there are cost-effective alternatives to certain police duties. Police work does not always require a great deal of expertise.

Terrorist simulation in Montreal

When doing an exercise like this one, it is important to be grounded in recent events. I am going to use the September 11th tragedy in New York.

It has been proven that over 80% of the people rescued were not rescued by fire fighters or police officers, but indeed by the security guards working in the two towers. The lesson is this: the police have every interest in working together with private security.

Last year, there was a simulated terrorist attack in downtown Montreal, near the Tour de la Bourse, where thousands of people work. Surprisingly: not a single private security service was invited to participate.

As a matter of fact, the simulation was stripped of every element of a problematic nature. The situation that was recreated merely involved the police managing the police or just synchronizing activities with fire fighters and ambulance services…

I call that not facing reality.

In many cases, the “public” police must, as an operational imperative, harmonize their actions with their private counterparts, instead of operating in a parallel universe where paths cross but no one really talks to each other.

Conclusion

In my opinion – and, since I think I have bent your ear long enough, I will close with this: it is time that we dare to think outside the box and find management parameters that will enable us to optimize the policing dollars invested by taxpayers.

I do not, in any way, shape or form, propose privatizing the police.

However, I am entirely in favour of the public sector and the private sector joining forces to better respond to the needs of the population as a whole.

Private enterprise is capable of the best and the worst. So is the government. I am therefore of the opinion that we should stop our futile bickering and open the way to some pilot projects that will silence many arguments. This would be the best way of identifying the risks and the advantages of PPPs in the police world.

If we cannot come up with effective ways of restructuring our police system, we will be left with an outdated police system from a past century that fails to meet our needs. We will be maintaining a police system that is in a state of underinvestment.

It is high time we showed some audacity and humbly recognize that the Quebec police model is past its prime. To this end, all new ideas for improvement deserve not only to be considered but also to be implemented as quickly as possible.

A number of Canadian provinces already have PPPs in place. Some have not worked out well but many have been a huge success. Why not take the successes, such as the ones in England, and build on them to create our own models?

All over the world, more and more PPPs are being set up. Even the developing countries are getting with the program. PPPs are being set up in every sector: roads, hospitals, schools, public transit, prisons, waste management, to name but a few. That is not to say that we should turn to PPPs today because everyone else is. Rather, we should look at them to see what the advantages have been elsewhere and then learn from them.

I repeat, policing will only win by experimenting with PPPs. PPPs are neither a poison nor a panacea. They must be evaluated case by case. A lot of transparency and a sharp critical eye are needed. And let us not forget trust and openness.

Police values and traditions are not so fragile that they cannot bear change and challenge. Nor are private sector values so narrow as to be deemed incapable of accommodating the imperatives of the common good.

My point today, as I am sure you have understood, is that policing must reconcile public with private, to get the best that both have to offer.

Thank you all and have a great seminar!

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