Constable Derek Chesney pretended he wasn’t too happy to see his friend David Dombowsky when the pair crossed paths Saturday.
Dombowsky, 63, was wearing an RCMP hat. Chesney, 38, works for the Saskatoon police.
“What are you wearing an RCMP hat for?” Chesney teased Dombowsky.
Dombowsky didn’t answer the question. He was too concerned about a minor conflict happening between his friends at the Lighthouse, a supported living space that offers emergency shelter and affordable housing.
He wanted Chesney to help solve the conflict.
“We’d be lost without him,” Dombowsky told CTV of his relationship with the beat cop.
Chesney has walked Saskatoon’s downtown beat for four years. He and his partner, Const. Mark Franklin, walk about 25 kilometres per day throughout the city’s downtown core and Broadway area.
“The advantage of being a beat officer is you do get a chance to spend time with people — and that’s old-style policing,” Chesney said. “You need the guys in the cars going to calls, but you need the guys on the bikes, you need the guys out walking the beat, talking to the public and getting to know people.”
After Chesney and his partner helped Dombowsky resolve the conflict between his friends, Dombowsky finally responded to Chesney’s joke about the RCMP hat.
“He won’t buy me a hat,” Dombowsky laughed.
Chesney’s interactions with residents at the Lighthouse show just how well-liked he is in Saskatoon’s downtown, but one friendship in particular is what earned Chesney the honour of Most Valuable Cop in U.S.-based online magazine Slate.
Chesney was recognized because of a heartfelt tribute he wrote last spring to Alvin Cote, a homeless man who died in April.
Cote abused alcohol and lived on the streets, but over the years became friends with Chesney and other police officers.
Slate wrote that Chesney's written tribute to Cote is a reminder that "cops can be as soft-hearted as anyone else."
Chesney said Cote’s death didn’t really sink in until he had finished writing the blog post.
“When Alvin passed I sat down with a piece of paper and I just wrote, and what came out is what you see on the blog there,” he said. “When I got it back [after it was proofread], I read it and it kind of hit me as I read it.”
Chesney began his tribute by writing: "In my line of work, it's not often that you can arrest somebody on multiple occasions and end up being friends with them. But such was the case with Alvin."
He went on to tell how Cote suffered years of abuse as a child at a residential school, how he was arrested again and again for public drunkenness and how police officers came to look out for him and buy him a burger whenever they could.
"It brings a tear to my eye to think of the bad things that happened to Alvin in his past to push him to lead the life that he led, but ... I do hope that he will find peace wherever he now may be," Chesney's blog concluded.
"Farewell my friend, you will be missed by many."
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with files from the Canadian Press
