Treena MacSween remembers her dad, an immigrant from Jamaica, polishing his shoes every night and imparting wisdom on his children.
“I can see him clearly in my mind, polishing his shoes,” MacSween said in London, Ont., on Thursday.
“He would always say, ‘You have to look the part. There are those who will judge you because of the colour of your skin, so always dress to impress.’ He would often turn to my sister and I and say that we had the added hurdle of being girls, so we had to work harder and work smarter.”
Now, MacSween, who has over 26 years of experience in policing, is the highest-ranked Black woman officer in Canada. She was announced as a deputy chief of the London Police Service, officially beginning on April 22.
“I am honoured to have been selected. From a young age, my mom and dad instilled in me the idea of work ethic. They worked tirelessly to create a life for their children to succeed,” she said. “My success today was an idea dreamt up by my parents over 60 years ago when they decided to immigrate to this country. They came here with little and life was not easy.”
MacSween most recently worked as a superintendent with the Hamilton Police Service, where she was in charge of the field support division, which oversees civilian employees who support officers.
New policing model
“I think it’s always important to look at functions that might be being completed by police officers but there’s an opportunity to bolster community safety and also take some pressure off the front line,” MacSween said.
“It’s really important to keep a lens on what areas or functions within the police service could potentially switch to a civilian role as we move forward into the future.”
A London police news release says MacSween has been “described as a trailblazer.”
“In 2017, she broke barriers by becoming Hamilton Police Service’s first person of colour promoted to the rank of inspector. Her subsequent promotion to superintendent in 2021 solidified a legacy as the fourth woman to achieve that rank in the service’s history.”
Having special constables, who don’t carry guns, do some policing duties is one of the ways London Chief Thai Truong wants to modernize the service.
“The end goal is to get officers back on the street so they can answer the calls for service,” MacSween said.
Working towards representation
MacSween’s hiring comes on the heels of London’s police service getting an unprecedented $672-million budget, the largest single investment in the history of the city’s service. It’s the first time London police have had three deputies.
MacSween and the other two deputies, Trish McIntyre and Paul Bastien, will each be in charge of one of three portfolios that Truong wants to focus on as he modernizes the force: community trust, community safety and organizational trust.
“We hired a chief less than a year ago and tasked him with an aggressive mandate for transformative change that would change the trajectory of law enforcement in our city for generations to come,” said Ali Chahbar, chair of the London Police Service Board, which acts as an oversight body for the police and hires high-ranking officers.
“We can’t truly claim to have community policing unless the police service represents the community that it serves — whether its race, creed, culture, gender — the composition of our service needs to reflect the community and today’s hiring symbolically represents a major step towards that goal.”
