Coffee shop owner got hooked on policing, now he's a Vancouver cop in training
Credit to Author: Derrick Penner| Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2020 01:39:19 +0000
Police recruit Alex Zhou didn’t know he wanted to be a cop until after he had already completed studies at BCIT and established his own coffee shop in White Rock.
He became hooked on the idea after taking a patrol ride about four years ago with a Vancouver police constable, who is the daughter of a friend.
“Once you actually see how they’re helping the community, people, I was just thrilled and really wanted to be one of them,” Zhou said.
On Friday, Zhou became one of 24 recruits sworn in as the Vancouver Police Department’s Class No. 162 to start training at the B.C. Justice Institute, among the 75 new officers the department expects to hire this year.
VPD spokeswoman Const. Tania Visintin couldn’t provide a figure on how many members will be retiring this year, but said the force typically hires enough recruits to accommodate attrition.
The skirl of bagpipes saluted the class as they marched into the room at VPD’s Graveley Street building and voices rang through the four-storey atrium as each individual recited their name during the swearing in.
After presenting each new recruit their badge, Chief Adam Palmer welcomed the class to a career that “really will be in the front seat of this roller coaster of life.”
Palmer’s assessment, after 32 years on the job himself, remains that policing is “the best job in the world,” that will involve danger and arresting hardened criminals, but also carries the satisfaction of solving problems and helping citizens.
Vancouver police receive applications from hundreds of civilians and dozens of police officers from other departments looking to make lateral transfers “and we take the best,” Palmer said, remarking on the quality of this class.
Former BC Lions Cody Husband during the team’s practice in 2016.
The 24 new recruits is a worldly group that includes members who were born in India, Korea, El Salvador, China and the Lower Mainland.
Individuals have lived in places such as Singapore, Tasmania, Germany and the Philippines with recruits speaking languages including Portuguese, Punjabi, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish and French.
Highly educated, the group’s credentials include criminology, criminal law, psychology, electronics technology, forensics, carpentry and plumbing.
Their career experience includes jobs in B.C. Sheriff’s service or B.C. Corrections, private security, three are members of the Canadian Armed Forces reserves, private security and one retired professional football player.
Cody Husband, formerly an offensive lineman for the B.C. Lions and Hamilton Tiger Cats in the Canadian Football League, tied up his career in 2019 after seven seasons and a couple of injuries that hinted that “I can’t keep putting my body through this.”
Law enforcement was always something he was interested in as a post-football career, based on the experience of extended family and friends in policing who encouraged him that it was a great job that he would excel at.
For Zhou, who was born in Harbin, China, and immigrated to Canada after finishing high school, the path to becoming a recruit involved selling his business to join B.C. Corrections to become a correctional officer at the Surrey Pretrial Centre and a volunteer with the Surrey RCMP.
“It really became my dream,” Zhou said. “And this is a dream come true for me.”