Calgary Police Chief Shares Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Giving

The YouthLink Calgary Police Interpretive Centre, if you ask this criminal defence lawyer, is one of the most effective programs in our city's law enforcement office. By providing at-risk youth (and all of Calgary's youth) with not only an alternative to poor choices like drug use and gang affiliation, but with a real education in the reasons these choices are damaging and the tactics they can use to resist peer pressure, YouthLink helps to reduce crime before it even happens.

If the police and I had only one common goal, it would almost certainly be to see Calgary a safe and enjoyable place for everyone to live, and the YouthLink Centre does exactly that.

It was nice to see that the impact the officers and cadets of the YouthLink Centre have are not going unrewarded, too.

In a recent guest column published in the Calgary Herald, Chief Roger Chaffin of the Calgary Police Service related a story of two CPS cadets, Stephen Deng and Yang Bol, both of whom immigrated from South Sudan, learning to ride bicycles in the YouthLink parking lot before heading inside to help Calgary's youth, including many who are themselves immigrants or children of immigrants.

An off-duty officer had volunteered to teach Deng and Bol, both in their late thirties, how to ride a bike, a dream they had both held since their boyhoods in their war-torn and impoverished native country. Now they not only know how to ride a bike, but each received a bicycle of their own from donations provided by other CPS officers.

This is the kind of story that illustrates the true spirit of Calgary, and of the way our communities work to support each other.

It's also a great way to wish everyone a merry Christmas.