Today, I witnessed a police officer in the DTES help an elderly Chinese gentleman dementia find his family, who was worried because they had no idea where he ran off to. This police officer had very little reason to stay at the scene after it was determined that the elderly man was not wanting to report a crime as was originally thought. She was able to achieve this despite a language barrier and a significant psych/confusion/dementia component.

There’s been a lot in the media in the past little while about our local and national police forces, specifically the mistakes they’ve have made and the outright scandals they’ve been involved in. That’s all we hear about. A big part of that is because they aren’t in the habit of coming out and saying, “Hey, we’re good at what we do and you know this because this is the successes we’ve had today, these are the people we’ve helped today, and these are the people we’re going after tomorrow.”

I would be remiss if I did not mention the contributions of the BC Ambulance Service. They responded within minutes to the call and expertly dealt with the man’s injuries. The two paramedics were well versed in the possible facilities that the man had come from and were familiar with the best emergency department for the patient who was better able to communicate in Chinese than English. One of the two Caucasian paremedics was able to care for the man using some rudimentary Cantonese too.

Of course, their work was assisted in part by the two Boy Scout members who performed first aid and the three fire fighters who were first on the scene. Rounding out the collaboration I saw today, two staff at S.U.C.C.E.S.S. assisted the police officer in contacting the man’s family and caretakers so that they could be reunited with him at the hospital.

I know that once you start thanking a long list of people for their contributions, it starts to mean less and less, but all the organizations I mention above should be very proud of the work that their members do.

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