Mock Court

Room 214 on the New Westminster campus is
unique in at least one respect—it has the Provin-
cial coat of arms on one wall because, every now
and then, this classroom becomes a courtroom
where prospective deputy sheriffs and students
from other disciplines learn how to give evidence,
among other judicial formalities. On this day, a
group of participants moved in from an adjacent
storage room and assembled the judge’s raised
dais, the accused’s dock and the witness box.
Standing in for a provincial court judge was the
Progiam Coordinator of the Courts Academy,
and the counsel were two instructors. The clerk
of the court was a student, as were the nine on-
lookers—all of them having spent the previous
hours learning how to write incident reports in-
volving supposed criminal offences that might
have taken place within a court building.

Called to the witness stand and sworn
in by the clerk :vas a student who, led by the
prosecutor, described a supposed incident in the
Kelowna courthouse where an accused he had
been guarding in the dock leapt out at the end
of his trial and rushed to the exit with the sheriff
in not pursuit. The accused then sped into traffic

COREE EOL OREO Sa HEN EE MOREE RNG VOTE SAEED NECA SN Oe Nw eee DEN TIE te ease rantcreeres

suspects--bearing semi-automatics in place of the revolvers they originally
carried. They have an extendable baton on their duty belt rather than a long
one that had to be fetched from a storeroom. And in the last few years, they
have learned how to safely use stun guns.

Their training has undergone just as dramatic an evolution. At the
start, the Academy was running a post-employment program at Jericho for
newly hired deputy sheriffs. In 1996, it was changed to a pre-employment
model—prospective students had to apply, be screened for suitability and
character and pay for their studies themselves, without any guarantee of a
job. That six-week session steadily grew over the years to eleven weeks, with a
practicum out in the field, and courtroom and jail procedures learned on site.

In 2008, the Academy again began training new, rather than prospec-
tive deputy sheriffs. Superintendent Jackie Ross welcomed the return to a
post-employment program she herself took in the mid-1980s. “We work in
a very sensitive field where things can be done in restricted or confidential
areas and people shouldn't be seeing or doing things until they are hired. It’s
certainly a better way of delivering the program, particularly because some
of it is happening out in the field”

In recent years, the Sheriff Service itself, employing about 500 sheriffs
and deputies, has been reorganized, Jim Mancell points out. “They've gone
through a huge transition. They're moving to a more centralized command
structure. Before, the Court Services Branch had districts throughout the
province and each of those would have an administrator, responsible for
providing administrative training related to the deputy sheriffs in that
district. A senior sheriff would be in charge of the sheriffs and deputies in
those areas, but he reported to the Court Services Branch administrator
in that area. Now there’s an Executive Director/Chief Superintendent of
Sheriff Services for the province and all the areas report to him. He’s like
their chief constable or their RCMP Commissioner, in charge of all the
sheriffs. So all the training and everything else, including the funding for
training, is all part of one centralized organization”

Mancell is a graduate of the first class of the B.C. Police College,
which preceded the JIBC’s Police Academy. During his career with the
Vancouver Police Department, he moved through the ranks, becoming a
corporal, detective and inspector. With a university degree in kinesiology,
he became Fitness Coordinator for the VPD and an instructor in both
fitness health and commercial crime investigation for the Police Academy,
where he also served as Program Director from 1998 to 2001. He later
earned a master’s degree in leadership and training and became the Courts
Academy Director in 2007.

Mancell foresees a strong and continuing need for deputy sheriffs
because the system is losing more people than in the past: “They’re one
of the groups that police are targeting for recruitment, seeing people with
sheriff's experience as viable candidates for a career in policing” A related