Former Delta police Sgt. Rick Parent never imagined he would have ended up where he is today.
After almost 30 years in policing, the Tsawwassen resident has ventured into the world of academia, now an assistant professor in police studies in Simon Fraser University's School of Criminology.
He has become well known as an expert in the area of police use of force, police shootings, ethics and accountability. He's conducted extensive research in these areas and is often called upon to testify in court as an expert witness. He has written dozens of articles, as well as coauthoring two criminology textbooks. His master's thesis on the phenomenon of suicide by police garnered international attention and he went on to complete his PHD.
In 1999 he was awarded the Lieutenant Governor's Award for Meritorious Service in recognition of his research in police shootings.
It's a far cry from where his life was headed.
As a high school student from the east side of Vancouver, Parent said he was planning on attending BCIT and pursing a more blue-collar line of work.
That all changed after a police officer visited his school. After hearing the officer talk about policing, a then 16-year-old Parent started to think that might be a viable career option.
It was not a popular opinion at the time, he said, adding police officers were not exactly held in high regard in that part of town.
Undeterred, Parent took the advice of a school counsellor and enrolled in the criminal justice program at Langara College in the late 1976.
"I never even thought of going to college or university," he said.
And at that point, he had never even heard of Delta.
As Parent and his fellow students prepared for graduation two years later, the class did a tour of the Delta Police Department.
"Delta was seen as a small but progressive department," he remembers, adding it was also looking for new recruits.
Parent applied, was hired and officially started his career in January 1980.
Over the years, Parent, who retired as a sergeant in 2008, worked in many areas of policing. He was assigned to general patrol duties, the professional standards unit, recruitment and community policing. He is a trained hostage negotiator and was assigned to the regional emergency response team. He worked on criminal files, traffic enforcement and crash investigation. However, one incident in particular provided the catalyst that propelled him on his current path. Parent was involved in a police shooting. A suspect with a gun was threatening to hurt other people and was shot by police. The suspect lived but the incident stuck with Parent, who started researching shootings involving police officers. There wasn't much out there and a lot of what he found was critical of police.
"Everything was pretty negative," he said. "The reality is most police don't want to hurt people."
Parent was inspired to start researching the matter on his own.
"It acted as a catalyst to venture into academics," he said. "It caused me to stop and think and wonder why police shoot people."
Parent made the decision to head back to school. While maintaining his fulltime duties with the Delta police and raising a family Parent took SFU classes, mostly by correspondence, and worked towards his bachelor's degree.
He didn't stop with the BA, however, and in the early 1990s he entered the master's program at SFU. His thesis, Aspects Of Police Use Of Deadly Force In British Columbia: The Phenomenon Of Victim-Precipitated Homicide, which took three years to complete, received international attention. The media, and those in police training and the academic worlds, were all interested in Parent's research.
He received invitations from all over North America, including from the FBI Academy, to speak on the topic. His research got so much attention that Parent was approached about applying the for PhD program at the university.
"That was never my intention," he said. "It was never a consideration. Next thing you know, I was there."
In 2006/07, SFU was looking for professors for its police studies program. Parent applied and was accepted, officially retiring from Delta police in 2008.
In addition to teaching, he also does a lot of writing and research on policing issues and is often called to testify in court or field calls from media outlets following an incident involving police.
Submitted Photo / Rick Parent, a former police officer, is an assistant professor in police studies in Simon Fraser University's School of Criminology.;
