Slow response to bullying in the city frustrates mother

After her son was threatened and verbally bullied on his walk home from a friend’s house, Michelle decided to call the police.
“The look on his face, I knew right away something was wrong,” said Michelle of the incident in March.
Two girls were verbally abusive and followed her son as he walked home.
“He’s like ‘mom it’s so bad I just don’t want to even repeat it’,” she said.
The language used can’t be printed in a family newspaper however Michelle did say she was told the girls threatened to rape her son.
“I’m like, I’m sorry they said what to you,” she said.
“I just was mortified,” said Michelle.
After discussing with her husband, they decided to file a complaint with the RCMP.
“We can’t let this kind of behavior go,” she said.
A constable came to their house and spoke with her son about what happened.
Unfortunately, after discussing with them, it was determined that no criminal offence had occurred.
While perhaps not a criminal act, what occurred was not right and Michelle wanted something to be done to show her son that there are consequences for one’s actions.
“It can’t be right that this has happened, he’s 12 years-old,” said Michelle.
The officer said that he would be following up with the girls’ parent’s.
It was at this point that the process started to slow down and Michelle became frustrated.
The constable said that Michelle would be told what happened, however communication was limited from the police during the nearly 30 day investigation.
The first issue started when the responding officer had to pass the file to another officer the next day.
The delays started to pile up with no updates on what was happening, something that frustrated Michelle, and left her son scared to walk in the neighbourhood.
“My son is scared, he walked a different way home from school,” she said.
As the delays kept piling up, Michelle said she started to feel let down by the police.
“My son shouldn’t feel scared to walk home from school,” she said.
“There has to be some kind of consequence for how she treated my son,” said Michelle.
As the time stretched out, Michelle began to wonder that had the roles been reversed and it was her son and a male friend harassing a younger girl if the situation would have been taken more seriously.
“I have had many friends, that are moms and dads of boys, share situations where their sons have been involved in incidents where a girl has been an instigator of verbal harassment or even physical altercations, but their sons have been held accountable while the girls didn’t have consequences,” she said.
“We need to be addressing these situations equally and fairly; Telling our kids that it is not ok regardless of gender,” said Michelle.
Chestermere RCMP Detachment Commander Staff Sgt. Mark Wielgosz agrees and said that the RCMP handle cases equally regardless of gender and that other factors determine the priority of each officer’s case load.
On April, 13 the original officer came to their home to tell them that he had spoken with the girls’ parents.
“He explained that he had been busy with other priority cases,” said Michelle, “he stated that the girl’s parents reacted appropriately and will be dealing with the situation.”
Despite the delays in getting to a resolution, Michelle said she is happy with the outcome.
“The Constable advised us that the girl’s parents wanted us to know they take the incident seriously and will be addressing it with their daughter,” said Michelle.
With closure on the complaint, Michelle hopes that this is the end of the saga and that her son can feel comfortable walking home from school again.
Wielgosz said that when something is determined to be non-criminal in nature police can still work to help find a solution and prevent it from reoccurring.
“If its determined that what was done did not involve any criminal elements then certainly its merely a matter of having a discussion to try to prevent future occurrences from happening,” he said.
However, each case that an RCMP member is working on is prioritized based on the severity of the file.
Michelle said that she understands this but still believes that her son’s case took too long.
“I am still of the opinion that it shouldn’t have taken almost 30 days to address,” she said.