Enyinnah Okere: How Edmonton Developed A Game Changing Policing Strategy

[00:00:02] This podcast is a Royfield Brown production. Find others on iTunes.

[00:00:09] Instead of helping companies shrink, I wanted to help them grow.

[00:00:12] In twin weeks, I never leave serendipity to chance.

[00:00:15] Mobilizing people is only useful if you can channel it to influence institutions.

[00:00:19] If I want to change that person's mind, it's much more useful for me to find a way to have a one-on-one conversation with them.

[00:00:25] And then that becomes this positive loop. I wasn't even the smartest kid in my neighborhood.

[00:00:29] One death is a tragedy 10,000 is a statistic.

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[00:00:36] I'm Greg Satell, author of Mapping, Innovation, and Cascades. And I'm with Roifield Brown, Bajisa.

[00:00:47] Hey Roisa.

[00:00:48] Hey Greg.

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[00:01:26] Greg, what exactly is going on in America?

[00:01:32] I do think it's similar to my experiences in Russia, in Ukraine, in Turkey. There's just a perception of disorder and people are voting for the person they think will bring order.

[00:01:48] You mentioned in even in Birmingham, in the UK, since Brexit, there's been something similar.

[00:01:55] I wouldn't necessarily pin this to Brexit. We've had austerity in the UK since 2010, since the Cameron government.

[00:02:03] And visible homelessness, visible wealth inequality, it's just skyrocketed within the UK.

[00:02:10] When I first went to the US in 2014, we didn't have people begging at traffic lights in my hometown of Birmingham.

[00:02:17] Now it's pretty standard.

[00:02:19] And that type of thing, even though crime is down in the US, the perception of crime, because you have a lot more people doing drugs in the street in major cities.

[00:02:32] So the perception of disorder is such that people want change.

[00:02:36] And that brings us to our next guest, who has worked to implement a very different type of policing at the Edmonton Police Service, which is specifically geared to that type of thing.

[00:02:54] People who are experiencing homelessness or substance abuse and getting them the help they need before they actually become criminals.

[00:03:04] And it's become a huge success and a model for other police departments across North America.

[00:03:13] It's a great success story.

[00:03:16] And here comes Inyina Mel.

[00:03:23] Inyina, good to see you.

[00:03:25] It's good to see you, boss. How are you doing?

[00:03:27] Roy Field, he helped design and run a very innovative program called the HELP Program at the Edmonton Police Service.

[00:03:39] Could you tell us about the program and how it's gone?

[00:03:44] Absolutely.

[00:03:45] 2020, I worked with an incredible team of superintendents, of my colleagues, that we were charged with trying to find a way to bend the demand curve for social disorder in our police service.

[00:04:01] When I say social disorder, things that aren't necessarily criminal, but it still rises to a requirement for a call for service.

[00:04:09] So this would be things like public intoxication, mental health, even petty theft and things like that.

[00:04:14] Nastic disturbance.

[00:04:16] Yeah.

[00:04:16] So how do we ensure that we could not continue to go to the same calls over and over and over again?

[00:04:25] And it's premised on the presupposition that if you're able to meet some of those kind of underlying needs for the individual, that they're not going to respond in a way that is going to require police response.

[00:04:35] So what the HELP team...

[00:05:05] We understand a very complicated system that is actually structured to provide services for those who are very marginalized and vulnerable, but it's too complicated.

[00:05:13] So how do we use all the powers of the police and the police services, as well as all the knowledge, the attributes, the networks of these social navigators is what we call them.

[00:05:25] But they're really social work focused individuals.

[00:05:27] Put them in a car together.

[00:05:29] And now we can start doing case management as well as addressing folks leading with strengths.

[00:05:35] So if you've got to...

[00:05:37] It's a call for service.

[00:05:38] You know this person.

[00:05:39] They may be drunk or you may be going through issues with withdrawal, whatever it may be.

[00:05:45] If the situation is dangerous, the police officer leads with their skills.

[00:05:48] If the situation is calm and requires some kind of social intervention, you have that resource right next to you.

[00:05:56] And the real premise is if you are in the pits and need help, you actually don't care who from the state is coming to help you.

[00:06:04] I just need help.

[00:06:05] There's no ideology there.

[00:06:07] So if we're looking at that individual, we need to ensure that we're providing all the resources we can from either mental health therapists, which we have, or the social navigator or the police officer to provide the best level of service for that individual.

[00:06:21] So what we've seen is over these two years and the last evaluation is that those folks who are high level of kind of disorder, and we have to case manage them a lot.

[00:06:34] And these are like our top 1%.

[00:06:35] By connecting them and then case managing them with both the police officer and the social navigator, we saw a reduction of 73% in their occurrences with the police post-intervention.

[00:06:47] Meaning by ensuring that you get people what they need, they don't become a call, repeat call for service.

[00:06:54] And it is not something for everyone.

[00:06:57] Like there's some criminals that are really dangerous people.

[00:06:59] That's not what this program is for.

[00:07:00] But we did believe we're coming out of the social justice discussion and we were planning on doing this anyways, that it was important to be able to provide this kind of service for those people who are very marginalized.

[00:07:11] And we've discussed this before.

[00:07:14] None of this means that the cops stop kicking down doors because some doors need to be kicked down.

[00:07:21] This is separate from that completely.

[00:07:24] And from what I understand, because these cases and not everybody can be helped, but the ones who can be helped, this actually frees up resources to do the other kind of, you say, police using their skills because they're not having to deal with a domestic situation or a guy who drinks too much or maybe a family that's having issues with keeping it.

[00:07:54] A roof over their head.

[00:07:56] So they're not mutually exclusive.

[00:07:58] It's actually synergistic because those kind of, I don't want to call them nuisance calls because they're serious things, but things that don't really need traditional police skills are being taken off the plate.

[00:08:13] Is that about right?

[00:08:13] Yeah.

[00:08:14] And these things happen still in tandem just because there's always that element of safety because you don't know where it can escalate to.

[00:08:22] But now we're able to free up patrol resources to be able to deal with the more higher level acute calls.

[00:08:30] Or if we get to our tactical or what you might think of SWAT, that's not where these folks are dealing with.

[00:08:36] So now you have a area of the police service and community that is focused on giving people who are at that lower end what they need and making sure that they don't graduate into the higher end.

[00:08:50] Because what we also see is if you have folks who are just marginalized or vulnerable, throwing them in jail for a nuisance, all you're going to do is you're sending them to a university to create career criminals.

[00:09:04] Right.

[00:09:05] So that doesn't actually create public safety.

[00:09:08] That doesn't engage it.

[00:09:09] The people who are in jail, they should be in jail.

[00:09:11] And that is like for the more serious crimes, they should be there.

[00:09:15] But we don't want to artificially make our city more dangerous by continuing to create a feeder system of moving people from lower jobs.

[00:09:24] Just because somebody has a bad run of luck, we shouldn't be paying the equivalent of a Harvard tuition to warehouse them.

[00:09:34] There's probably some better things that we could be doing.

[00:09:37] And from what I understand, not only has it been super successful in Edmonton, but it has been it's become a model because you started this in 2000 in the wake of the George Floyd killing and so on and so forth.

[00:09:51] And now I know in the next town over, they have a for me, they have a similar program.

[00:09:58] And as I understand, this is becoming a new fairly.

[00:10:02] I don't want to call it a trend, but this is a success that is being replicated in lots of different places.

[00:10:10] Absolutely. So in 2019, the chief of police here, Dale McFigurit, the community safety and being bureau, which is the first of its kind in Canada for policing, which is essentially charged that bureau with creating partnerships that was designed to reduce crime and increase well-being.

[00:10:26] The health program was a program within that bureau that our team was leading.

[00:10:31] What we've seen in the timing of this interview is excellent because as we were doing it, it felt like we were going it alone in the country.

[00:10:38] As we started to see the success, lots of different police agencies, both nationally and internationally, would come into Edmonton to see just exactly what is happening here and the mechanics of it.

[00:10:48] And then how do they replicate that within their own jurisdiction in a way that makes sense for them?

[00:10:54] I just came back from a conference.

[00:10:56] We were speaking at a conference this week in Toronto.

[00:10:58] It's called the Safety of Our Cities Conference.

[00:11:00] And you can look it up online.

[00:11:03] Going to that conference, it now seems that every different jurisdiction, like of the participating police services and what's national and international.

[00:11:10] So there was Albuquerque, New Mexico was there.

[00:11:13] There was different, I believe Denver was there.

[00:11:16] Nashville, sorry, was there.

[00:11:18] There are different.

[00:11:19] This movement in terms of focusing on community safety and being has now spread from that 2019 inception to where we are out in 2024.

[00:11:28] And you have to go through that kind of the George Floyd movement, navigate through that.

[00:11:32] But the results speak for itself.

[00:11:34] And folks actually want to make a tangible impact in their community.

[00:11:37] It doesn't mean, once again, it's the panacea for everything, but it is something that is moving our communities forward and having a material impact in terms of public safety.

[00:11:48] Let's reverse up.

[00:11:50] Where did this approach actually come from?

[00:11:53] What was the genus of you trying to put empathy and community into policing?

[00:12:01] Where did that start?

[00:12:02] The idea actually started with the police chief when he was a police chief in a different jurisdiction.

[00:12:08] And he had gone out to Scotland to look at how they were addressing community safety within their community.

[00:12:17] And from there was launched the bringing back to Canada, looking at situation tables and essentially building partnerships to reduce crime.

[00:12:25] That's the fundamental piece that you can't arrest your way out of all of your issues.

[00:12:30] So we, and this kind of gets to the genesis of how I even ended up in policing, upon instilling that within his police service, brought that into the government of Saskatchewan.

[00:12:40] So it's the province neighboring us.

[00:12:41] And that's where I was living before coming to Alberta, into the government of Saskatchewan, to look at how do we now, with government, work with local police to build local partnerships that are going to be able to keep that individual who is at the center of this firmly at the center.

[00:12:57] So how we bring, whether it be education, health care, social services, justice, all of us working together to look at the needs of the individual and then the person or the jurisdiction with the, that can take the lead does to focus on that individual.

[00:13:14] So that was at a government level.

[00:13:18] 2019, we all come to the Edmonton Police Service.

[00:13:21] And the idea was now to localize that.

[00:13:23] And that's how the genesis of the Bureau was built out.

[00:13:26] And subsequently in 2020, I land in the Bureau.

[00:13:29] And my job is to work with a great team to be able to now actualize it in reality.

[00:13:36] So like most things, the genesis of a great idea started off in Britain, in the United Kingdom.

[00:13:41] Like most things.

[00:13:42] You, you're Nigerian by birth.

[00:13:46] By birth, yes.

[00:13:47] Let's do kind of a bit of a radio link here.

[00:13:51] How does policing in Canada compare to policing in Nigeria?

[00:13:56] Do they have the same holistic approach that you've taken to policing?

[00:14:01] Or is it a little bit more punitive?

[00:14:03] And I think I know the answer.

[00:14:05] And then we're going to get back to how you even ended up in Canada.

[00:14:08] Yeah, it's much more punitive.

[00:14:10] And I can speak to it what my parents' experience was back home and what it instilled.

[00:14:17] Perhaps the country has changed.

[00:14:18] I doubt it, but perhaps the country has changed.

[00:14:21] But it was a very different view of there was very little trust in police.

[00:14:25] There was really very little trust in institutions, especially when institutions can change overnight.

[00:14:30] And something that's simple that even still sticks with me today, that folks, unless you're coming from places like this, you don't understand.

[00:14:37] When you have a power outage here in Canada, people get upset at whoever their service provider is.

[00:14:42] And hey, get this going right away.

[00:14:44] When that used to happen for us, like growing up, my mother would just say something simple as, oh, the government took the light.

[00:14:49] Right. And that is you just expected the state to do things that are punitive like that, or you couldn't rely on just a regular level of service.

[00:14:58] And I think that's really the foundation that I still grew up with and bring to the work within policing that I know, especially in our city here in Edmonton, by 2050, it's going to be 50-50 in terms of diversity.

[00:15:10] And this is going to be immigration and in-migration from other parts of the world.

[00:15:15] How do we ensure that we're putting that best foot forward?

[00:15:19] Because we know that you might be coming from a different jurisdiction, that you have a very different relationship with police that's far more punitive.

[00:15:27] You talked about not trusting institutions.

[00:15:31] And I think the very nature of you policing the way that you're policing in Canada, there is inherent trust in the institution.

[00:15:41] Tell us about the reason why you had to leave Nigeria.

[00:15:44] There was a change of regime.

[00:15:47] Yeah, there was a change in regime.

[00:15:49] Like my father had already left, but he was doing his doctorate at the University of Guelph.

[00:15:54] It was my mother, my sister and I.

[00:15:55] And right away one day, and like I was a young child, just remembered that my mom said, OK, General Sani Abacha is now taking over the government.

[00:16:03] And for us, it was figuring out now the how do we get over and who can help sponsor us to get over to Canada, be reunited with my father.

[00:16:13] But why was that change of regime necessarily a threat to your family?

[00:16:18] There was no alignment.

[00:16:20] And for us, we also had family that was within sometimes when you have people who are within certain government institutions and then these changes happen.

[00:16:28] It's not necessarily the best place for you to be.

[00:16:31] So there was no alignment and we could see where the country was also going because it didn't necessarily get better.

[00:16:37] And it still isn't now as we still see that kind of perpetual tension and churn that's happening.

[00:16:43] So it was the best reason for us to expedite our leaving and connect in Canada to be able to build a new world.

[00:16:51] So that's really what we had to do sooner than later.

[00:16:54] My father always talks about coming to England for the first time from Jamaica.

[00:16:59] And he just said, I thought everywhere there were factories because there was smoke coming out of these chimneys.

[00:17:05] I can't imagine a more, in terms of climate, a more stark change from Nigeria to, with all the grace and respect, because I know Canada, at least the great province of Ontario, the middle of nowhere in Canada.

[00:17:21] Like the climatic change, the cultural change.

[00:17:23] How did you cope with that?

[00:17:25] I didn't well at first.

[00:17:28] So when I landed here, and though I spoke like I'm Igbo, but I spoke at what I thought was English back in Nigeria, I get dumped in English as a second language right away.

[00:17:40] So now I'm navigating, fitting in.

[00:17:43] I think in Nigeria, you differentiate yourself by tribe or your family.

[00:17:49] Then you come to Canada and this is the first time you've ever actually seen color or skin color.

[00:17:54] Because prior to that, it was a pretty kind of monolithic culture, or at least racially, that everyone was black.

[00:18:00] So now you come, you realize you are different.

[00:18:03] And like we landed on Toronto, go to Guelph, Ontario, which was more of like an agricultural kind of farming, smaller town.

[00:18:11] And I'm the only one who looks like me, and I'm definitely the only one who sounds like me.

[00:18:14] And I'm now figuring out what do you do to survive?

[00:18:19] And what do you do to not even think about thriving, but survive?

[00:18:23] So you end up becoming damn near chameleon in order to assimilate.

[00:18:28] And that doesn't actually, it doesn't feel natural, but it's a survival tactic.

[00:18:34] So upon learning the language, then you start learning kind of the culture, but you live in both worlds of your parents are raising you to be what they know of the country that they've left.

[00:18:45] And which actually is a very static view, because as soon as you leave this country, it continues to evolve.

[00:18:51] But you still have a very particular view of what it was back home.

[00:18:54] So you're raised in what was Nigeria in 1993 for the next 10 to 15 years, while also having to now go through, go through figuring out growing up in a new country.

[00:19:06] And like, I think it's similar to your last guest, Yasmin, who's speaking about, I was very firmly Sudanese at home in Australia, but I still had to figure out navigating being the only person that looked like me within Queensland.

[00:19:19] And so that tends to be that immigrant experience and figuring out your own personal identity as it evolves and moves away from your families, because it's different and you don't have enough that critical mass and environment to keep you grounded in it, while not being the same as the folks that you're interacting with on a very daily basis.

[00:19:39] So you talked about having to survive, but you didn't only just survive, you've actually survived.

[00:19:46] And dare I say, you've won because you have this rich, open barrel voice, which is the sound of success.

[00:19:52] You sound successful.

[00:19:53] So what do you subscribe to the fact that you couldn't only just survive, also thrive in this new country, in this new community?

[00:20:04] So it wasn't necessarily an easy or enjoyable path to get there.

[00:20:10] As anyone who's growing up, you're trying to anchor yourself in what your sense of identity is.

[00:20:15] And for other folks, especially in more kind of monolithic cultures, that is easier.

[00:20:24] When you're the outlier, you're always representing that you're that outlier.

[00:20:28] But if you are 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, you're just trying to like you're trying to fit in with folks.

[00:20:34] So for me, it was learning a lot about the culture that I've moved into.

[00:20:39] And I would say probably growing up, I waited more energy in learning and assimilating and trying to take in that information.

[00:20:50] And looking back, I wish that I would have been able to preserve a little more of that Nigerian culture.

[00:20:57] I think one of the most beautiful things that happen in big cities or when you travel is that cultural exchange.

[00:21:03] But it was a very one way street for me growing up.

[00:21:08] So I was able to take all of these things and you now have cultural kind of connection points.

[00:21:13] And that actually was what was able to help me in the beginning of my career working in politics.

[00:21:20] Like you have to be able to engage with folks.

[00:21:23] And the party that I was working for was a liberal conservative coalition.

[00:21:28] But most of the elected folks were coming from very rural backgrounds.

[00:21:34] And so for them, I was their black friend.

[00:21:37] I was their first point of con with a lot of folks who are going to look different.

[00:21:43] Now you carrying that level of representation.

[00:21:46] And there is something that happens when you are an outlier.

[00:21:49] If I screw this up, I screw this up for everyone who looks like me.

[00:21:54] And that may be true or may not be true.

[00:21:56] But that is a pressure that you carry.

[00:21:57] For me, there was a shift from when I went from looking to only take in that information and almost put it in my tool belt, learn about it, immerse myself in it, to now how do I confidently stand in who I am, what my background is, and you have that blend.

[00:22:16] And I think that's where success really started for me when I was able to bring and really showcase the things that I would have learned growing up, the things that would have been like the way I was raised in my home to bring it culturally to the people that I connect with.

[00:22:33] And was very happy that they enjoyed that exchange as well of systemic racism and avenues to actually address it.

[00:22:44] In a previous episode with Yasmin that you referred to, one of the things that she said that struck me, and I don't think she's ever expressed it to me before, but I know it's true.

[00:22:57] From 15 years living overseas, she said, at some point you need to decide whether you want to be the only one or one of many.

[00:23:08] And there's advantages and disadvantages to both.

[00:23:13] And you seem to have mastered that, navigate as an outsider, and also how that gives you empathy for others.

[00:23:23] I know you've spoken about this, who might feel like outsiders too.

[00:23:27] Could you talk a little bit about that?

[00:23:29] Absolutely.

[00:23:30] So I look at things in terms of status groups and high status groups and low status groups, and those status groups are going to look, can look very different.

[00:23:42] It could be based on race.

[00:23:44] It could be based on gender sex.

[00:23:46] It could be based on athleticism.

[00:23:48] It could be based on money.

[00:23:50] Also in some societies, it's based on kin institutions and where your family fits in to those kin institutions.

[00:24:00] Exactly.

[00:24:01] And I feel like these are one of the few things that is ubiquitous across the world.

[00:24:08] And so for me, I remember who I was trying to fit in without any of those status markers.

[00:24:15] Like I was lucky that I was able to have an outsized talent when it came to athletics that was able to give a level or modicum of social capital.

[00:24:25] But save for having that, it may have been very difficult for me.

[00:24:28] For me, it's that understanding that regardless of who the individual is, people want to feel like they're accepted.

[00:24:36] They want to be, feel like they belong, and they want to feel like they can authentically be themselves, not mirror or masquerade themselves as anything else.

[00:24:43] That's my lens in looking at how I interact with individuals.

[00:24:48] So I could get to the place that I'm at right now.

[00:24:51] I'm the chief operations officer, deputy chief equivalent.

[00:24:55] And there's not many people who look like me and have that intersection of age as well.

[00:25:01] But real success is how do you bring or create at least an environment that other people can come to this spot as well.

[00:25:10] So my focus is to be as inclusive as possible, but also knowing and fairly grounded with what the world felt like when it wasn't.

[00:25:23] We were talking about identity traps before we started the episode.

[00:25:27] But when you say status is always related to identity, and it's very important for us to signal identity because our identity is related to our role in a collective action.

[00:25:42] And there's a lot of evolutionary psychology behind this about how collective action emerged.

[00:25:50] And of course, it's different in societies within institutions than it is that are centered, as in Western societies, around a nuclear family.

[00:26:01] Some of those identities are obvious.

[00:26:03] Police put on a uniform.

[00:26:04] That shows what their role is.

[00:26:07] Some or less.

[00:26:08] Some wear a suit and ties.

[00:26:10] But we're all almost in some ways that we're conscious of, in some ways that we are not.

[00:26:16] We're all signaling identities and interpreting the signals of others, whether that's a political identity or an occupational identity and what have you.

[00:26:26] However, identity can also can be a very good thing because it lets people know what role we want to play.

[00:26:35] But it can also be a trap.

[00:26:37] And we've seen that, too, where the importance of someone signaling an identity, whether that's some sort of virtue status, whether that's some sort of political belief, that signaling that identity can undermine the cause itself.

[00:26:57] And people get stuck that way.

[00:26:59] And I see it all the time, both in my organizational work and with people engaged with social activism.

[00:27:06] How do you navigate that?

[00:27:08] Because you're obviously very clear about all of your identities and signal them very clearly.

[00:27:14] How do you avoid the trap of wanting to signal that identity so much that it gets in the way?

[00:27:22] It's actually fairly easy for me.

[00:27:26] Since I don't have a 30-year career in law enforcement, I'm not dumb enough to think that I have all the answers.

[00:27:37] So I have but no choice but to listen to other people and then think about what makes sense and what can be practical.

[00:27:46] But it puts you in a place that you have to be able to connect and collaborate.

[00:27:51] So for me, and especially in the work that I had to do at the beginning, we were crashing and burning and trying to convince the world that this was a good idea.

[00:28:01] And I felt like at that time in 2020, 2021, 2022, that there were a lot of folks in that trap that would put the idea or the show of protest over their stated goal of progress.

[00:28:16] And that just was not on to me because the other part of being that immigrant, when you come here, that mentality never leaves you of, I have to succeed in whatever this endeavor is.

[00:28:30] For me, rather than, and with our team, continue to beat our head against the wall with folks who weren't going to work, I just needed to find who was willing to take that step or who wasn't so mired in ideology that they could still at least come up for air and say, okay, but are we trying to get to this place for community safety?

[00:28:48] So it was actually just finding like-minded or open-minded partners within the ecosystem that were willing to take that chance together.

[00:28:57] So there were rather big institutions that were platformed during a lot of the social justice discussion and protests that we wanted to work with, but save for them not wanting to do that.

[00:29:13] All right, then let me find out who's willing to take that step and then let's go all in together.

[00:29:17] And that was what my focus was.

[00:29:20] We don't have all the answers.

[00:29:21] I sure, heck, don't have all the answers, but there are probably folks with a different perspective that we can work with that will get us a little bit closer.

[00:29:32] And I think that's actually the benefit of diversity and not looking at their locking it into the physical representative diversity, but folks who think differently, folks who have different tools, folks who have different networks, that by virtue of us partnering and giving them space to lead in certain respect, we opened ourselves up to a different level of solutions and different level of success than we otherwise could have had ourselves.

[00:30:00] So going beyond the, oh boy, it's just easy to say defund the police or it's just easy to say we should abolish the police and then all of a sudden things are going to get better in our society.

[00:30:12] And you know that was doomed to fail.

[00:30:15] And the very divisive and authoritarian nature of that conversation was going to turn reasonable people off in the end.

[00:30:24] And I think we've seen this, but for the folks who kept that vision locked in and did not have enough ego to believe that not the destination to it was more important than actually getting to that destination.

[00:30:41] What I mean by the way we get there has to be my way or it's not worth getting to that destination.

[00:30:46] That's how we move past that trap.

[00:30:49] As we wrap up, you've obviously been very successful both career-wise, but also just in terms of the impact you've created with your team.

[00:31:02] And not only in Edmonton, but I know you speak, you travel pretty widely these days to speak with law enforcement in many places.

[00:31:12] And I also know that your wife is quite a changemaker herself, a social activist, a really great leader of nonprofit institutions.

[00:31:26] From that perspective, what advice would you give to someone else who's an aspiring changemaker who'd want to make an impact?

[00:31:36] What's one thing you wish you knew before you started your journey?

[00:31:43] I think I'll say a couple things.

[00:31:46] The first thing is it may seem daunting and you think you're trying to boil the ocean.

[00:31:52] So if you're like me, you have a lot of self-doubt.

[00:31:56] That doubt precludes you or prevents you from taking that first step.

[00:32:00] And I think this is the premise of a lot of things that you've spoken about.

[00:32:03] Like you don't have to be some incredible, like the worst thing that happens is like you're able to read about people doing incredible things in books.

[00:32:11] And by virtue of that being in a book, like, oh, that's not me.

[00:32:14] I'm just a meathead who goes to the gym, then goes to work.

[00:32:17] And you try to make a little bit of a difference, but I could never do something great.

[00:32:22] So you actually psych yourself out and talk yourself out from taking that first step.

[00:32:25] So I think the first thing is there's that belief that like once you've taken that first step to try to do something, you've already surpassed so many other people who are just mired in that process of they don't want to do it or they're afraid to do it.

[00:32:40] Or they don't believe that they have the capacity to do it.

[00:32:45] Take that first step.

[00:32:45] The next thing is connect with people, connect with people and don't feel don't be so locked in your ego that you believe your way is the only way to get there.

[00:32:57] Like you have to have an element of wealth of power in terms of that the drive to get up and do this every day after you get punched in the face and then you come back and you do it every day.

[00:33:08] But if it is, it only has to be here and I have to get the credit for it.

[00:33:14] That's only going to take you but so far.

[00:33:16] So taking that first step, not worrying about how extraordinary you get to be a great order, you have to be a great system thinker.

[00:33:24] Regular people can do this.

[00:33:26] And I'm living proof that just working with the right people, you're able to move that yardstick just a little bit forward.

[00:33:33] And now what we're seeing from the Edmonton perspective now across Canada is that other jurisdictions have taken hold of this and I'm hoping they move it forward so that we can leapfrog again.

[00:33:44] But that all starts with that taking that first step and like getting over yourself.

[00:33:49] Just because you can't, I love that, just because you can't change everything all at once doesn't mean you can't do something.

[00:33:56] And that's always a great place to start.

[00:33:59] Thanks so much for coming on, Inyina.

[00:34:02] Inyina, it's always great to see you.

[00:34:05] Thank you very much and go birds.

[00:34:07] Lovely to meet you too, my friend.

[00:34:09] Bye-bye.

[00:34:09] Oh, pleasure to meet you, brother.

[00:34:17] What did I tell you?

[00:34:18] He's a super impressive guy, yeah?

[00:34:22] Very impressive guy.

[00:34:23] And what I really took away from that is a diversity of thought and experience that him growing up as an immigrant meant that he could view Canadian society slightly differently and be able to then, in effect, in this initiative, fill in the gaps.

[00:34:42] Get those different bits of Canadian society to work in lockstep.

[00:34:47] And then also this kind of whole thing about empathy and policing through empathy was really a valuable lesson.

[00:34:58] Yeah.

[00:34:58] And I thought it was interesting that he pointed to our episode with Yasmin and they both lived that immigrant experience.

[00:35:05] And I think you and I, having lived in different countries, I think we've experienced some version of that where you're forced to internalize other points of view that you might not hold.

[00:35:19] And what I thought was so interesting and impactful is he took the same approach to the police service where they understand you have a need for guys who kick down doors, but also a need for these social navigators who get people the help they need.

[00:35:40] And it wasn't all just about feels as well, that the help program had a 73% reduction in police calls amongst kind of high need individuals.

[00:35:52] So, you know, not only could he talk about empathy, but he could back it up with stats.

[00:35:57] Yeah.

[00:35:58] And that's the point.

[00:35:59] And I think it's such an important aspect of change.

[00:36:04] You have to show that you're making change work for people.

[00:36:08] And I think that is what Inyina and his team have done so well and why they're making the impact that they are.

[00:36:17] Thanks for tuning in to Changemaker Mindset.

[00:36:20] If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review and follow us on social media to stay updated on all the latest episodes.

[00:36:29] Your support helps us bring more insightful conversations to the table.

[00:36:33] And don't miss out on our next episode, where we'll be chatting with Rob Sutton, an organizational psychologist and author specializing in leadership, innovation and workplace dynamics.

[00:36:45] His recent work focuses on scaling and improving large organizations to boost performance, innovation and well-being.

[00:36:52] Until then, keep making change happen.

[00:36:54] We'll see you next time.