Sit and have a coffee with Victoria police deputy chief John Ducker and you won’t go unnoticed.
Count on a string of hellos and nods coming his way, a testament to his reputation as a genuinely nice guy as well as a veteran cop. You can also count on honest opinions from him, including the fact that a tightening department budget played a part in his decision to retire after 34 years on the Victoria force.
“I spent my career trying to build this place up and get the adequate staffing and officers we need to do the job, and we’re going to enter into an era of restraint and cuts,” said the 54-year-old Ducker. “The prospect of maybe having to take things down and dismantle stuff you’ve built up would be a real challenge.”
Victoria Mayor Dean Fortin, who chairs the Victoria Police Board, acknowledged the budget process will not be an easy one, but said he personally is against cutting personnel.
“What the City of Victoria has asked for is our police department to come in with a two per cent budget increase. It’s a challenge. We’re going to have to find ways to do it.”
If he hadn’t decided to retire, Ducker would have applied for the top job, with police Chief Jamie Graham retiring at the end of the year. But it just wasn’t in the cards, Ducker said.
“That was a very tough decision, and I agonized over that with my wife for a year,” said the burly man, who is often known simply as J.D.
In the end, he didn’t want to prolong his career another five years, the standard term for someone signing on as chief. He said his age means it’s time to go on to something else.
“In civilian terms, [age 54] isn’t much. But in the police world, I’m an old guy,” said Ducker, whose time on the Victoria force was preceded by two years as a police reservist. “The miles you put on doing police work are a lot different than in a civilian world.”
Ducker’s accomplishments include helping with the development of the Victoria Integrated Community Outreach Team, aimed at bringing agencies together to help people who have a wide range of problems. The program was hatched in 2006 when he noticed a large number of street people in the city.
“In my view, it was getting to be an epidemic. And I thought the processes and things we are doing currently aren’t working, so we have to look at something new — some approach to get these people off the street and into an environment that can support them.”
Interest in the integrated model spread, and Ducker has spoken to groups in Toronto and Montreal about it.
Kathy Stinson, executive director at the Cool Aid Society, which operates shelters and provides a range of services in Victoria, worked with Ducker in creating the outreach team.
“He was instrumental early on in helping us secure St. John the Divine [church] as kind of a satellite shelter,” she said.
Stinson said Cool Aid and several other downtown social agencies got together two years ago to surprise Ducker with a breakfast celebration and “honour him as one of the unsung heroes in Victoria.”
“He leaves big shoes to fill.”
Ducker is highly respected by his colleagues, said Victoria Police Const. Mike Russell, who also pointed out that comments about Ducker on the department’s Facebook page are “overwhelmingly positive.”
In April, Ducker was caught up in a rare moment of controversy for comments he made after a misconduct hearing found two officers had used excessive force. One was deemed to have abused his authority during a downtown altercation caught on video.
As acting police chief, Ducker said publicly that he didn’t think the officers had acted unreasonably.
Hearing adjudicator Ben Casson called Ducker’s comments “totally inappropriate.” Ducker apologized.
A career as long as Ducker’s doesn’t come without a few regrets. His include the unsolved case of Michael Dunahee, who disappeared from a playground in 1991 at the age of four.
“I was a very junior detective involved in that case, and it’s haunted me for years,” Ducker said. “We’ve still got a full team on it, though.”
In the final stages of his career, Ducker has become the department’s official blogger, writing about often-quirky cases on the VicPD Beat Blog. It’s also where he chose to announce his retirement.
That post included interesting tales, like the one about the hapless crooks nabbed because the money they took included $800 in loonies. Thanks in part to the added weight that slowed them down, the police caught up in time to foil the getaway. Unfortunately, the loonies spilled all over the road, leaving Ducker and another officer with a lengthy cleanup.
Throughout his time on the force, the Toronto-born Ducker has called Esquimalt home. He has been in the region since 1971, when his family moved from Calgary.
Once he pulls the plug Sept. 1, Ducker and his wife, Bridget, plan to head to Maui for a little down time.
Beyond that, the path is unclear, but Ducker intends to pursue interests in writing and photography, and to hang out with his adult daughters, Jayne and Megan.
There may even be a few books in him. He leans more to history as a muse than to his years in uniform. Some of that affinity for history comes from his mother, who was a code-breaker at England’s Bletchley Park decryption centre during the Second World War.
Ducker also hopes to stay involved in the community.
“I still want to work with people that are marginalized and having difficulties,” he said.
