CREDIT: STEPHANIE LAI
Current Deputy Chief John Pare was selected to be Chief Brad Duncan's successor, effective May.

Deputy Chief John Pare will be taking over as police chief for the London Police Service, effective May 2.

Pare, a long-time Londoner, began his career in LaSalle in 1987. He’s in his 28th year in policing.

Being in London, he says all of his encounters with students have been respectful and mostly positive.

“I treat people with respect, and I can gladly say that the majority, if not all the encounters I’ve had with students, have been respectful,” Pare said. “The students within our community are valued.”

He says he looks beyond the high-profile incidents London is known for.

“I was out on St. Patrick’s Day last year, and kudos to the students,” he said. “They were respectful – it was good.”

Pare has yet to make his goals public, but says that he wants to continue open lines of communication with student groups.

“I value the input we receive from the community, and the mutual respect and diversity are really important to me,” he said. “It will continue to work together to bring forward issues and resolve those issues.”

Pare says he will continue to strengthen the educational piece of Project L.E.A.R.N.

“Part of [Project L.E.A.R.N.] isn’t solely about the enforcement; it’s about the education piece,” he said. “We will continue to be proactive in providing the information to new students that living in those residences is about acceptable behaviours and working with their partners in the community to make sure that we can continue down that road.”

Pare wants students to understand that police just want an atmosphere of respect in neighbourhoods around the campuses.

“It’s about being respectful of your neighbours and mindful of your behaviours,” he said. “There are other people that live within these neighbourhoods that may have to get up to go to work the next day or have young children at home.”

Pare does remind that most offenses are given to non-students and that university and college students are not targets.

“The large percentage of whether it be a ticket or offence notice or charges relate to non-students,” he said. “[Project L.E.A.R.N. is] not about targeting students.”

While Pare hasn’t been on the streets since he became deputy chief in 2012, he says he will still try to be hands-on.

“I’ve gone out on foot patrol, or I’ve gone out on ride-alongs,” he said. “It’s also important to not get too far from what the front-line officers face with on a daily basis and to see it from their perspective and be out there.”

Pare, a grandfather of one, will start his five-year contract as chief in May and says he will request for renewal when he nears the end of the contract.