Yes, I probably have a different outlook on this situation because I've been involved in this sort of work for many years, on the child protection side and now in domestic violence. I believe we have to address the issues of vulnerable persons in our community. Violence is still considered a viable option in peoples' lives, and there has to be some sort of paradigm shift. There has to be some educational component that tells people to stop, that it's not appropriate.
As a policing organization we have become desensitized because of the volume of work that is out there, because of the level of violence that we see perpetuated against people day in, day out. We've grown accustomed. We've made allowances. We've had to set thresholds with respect to what we'll investigate and what we won't investigate. We'll investigate assault causing bodily harm, but we can't look after assaults. You know what? We'll do the aggravated assaults, but we won't do the assaults with a firearm.
This is the world I live in now. It has become so complex and so busy that we have to make certain allowances within the confines of our own organization because we don't have enough resources. Do we need more resources? I'm not sure. I think there has to be a bit of a paradigm shift in terms of what we believe is important to us as a community. If the focus is vulnerable persons and family violence, I think that may alleviate a lot of the issues that we see, that we're dealing with now in the long term. I maintain this fact, and I've maintained it my entire career as a police officer for 25 years: you spend 85% of your time going into people's homes. It's not responding to bank robberies and the calls that maybe police officers think they're going to answer when they're young and impressionable. When they get old and bald like me, they realize that it's really important to learn how to talk to people.
So I think we have to get back to basics. You win the hearts and minds of people through their trust.