RCMP seeks youth advisory committee input

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This article was published 27/07/2022 (883 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a nine-year-old child, Grayson Nzomwita was stopped by Winnipeg police walking to his River Heights home — an experience that gave him a negative opinion of law enforcement.

“They told me I fit a description of a break-in suspect, so they followed me home. As I was walking home, one of the constables yelled out, ‘If you’re lying, we’ll come back and get you,’” said Nzomwita, 20, who is bi-racial.

“Keep in mind, I lived in River Heights — it’s a pretty nice area… So, going to high school, I didn’t have the best perception of police.”

That perception changed after a discussion about policing and his experiences with it with a school resource officer, said Nzomwita, a University of Manitoba criminology student who was among the nine Manitobans that recently sat on the RCMP’s national youth advisory committee.

He now wants to become a police officer.

The RCMP are again seeking input from youth on issues in their communities — including Manitobans ages 13 to 21 — as a means of shaping the Mounties’ programs and initiatives.

The yearly advisory committee, first formed in 2010, sits online on moderated, private forums to discuss youth crime and victimization, including bullying, online safety, gangs, substance use and violence, as well as RCMP policies and programs.

The committee (deadline to apply for 2022-23, which sits from October to June, is Sept. 12) also hears from RCMP officers and other experts on topics affecting youth.

Nzomwita is now applying to be a Winnipeg Police Service auxiliary cadet, and plans to eventually join the force.

“I’m trying to become a police officer to help mend the bridges between visible minorities and police, just through my own experiences and, hopefully, I can carry that on to the day I become a police officer,” he said.

Nzomwita said his experience on the committee was a positive one, after he was encouraged to apply by a family member in the RCMP.

“We talked about a variety of things: suicide awareness and the police and youth in general. We talked about healthy relationships involving domestic issues. We talked about the disproportion (in) policing — how there’s not that much of a visible minority representation in policing — so we talked about the barriers there.”

He said the group also discussed ways the RCMP could get more involved in schools and have positive interactions from a young age.

Nzomwita has volunteered with the Bear Clan and Mama Bear Clan volunteer community patrols for two years, learning from his experiences about barriers and issues faced by people in the North Point Douglas neighbourhood.

He’s now planning a drum-making workshop for Indigenous youth with Bear Clan and WPS later this summer.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca