Patrolling Ottawa: McFadden policing his hometown
- Kassia Skorzewska
- Apr 23, 2023
- 4 min read
Patrolling the streets of Ottawa is not all Tom McFadden has done for the Ottawa Police Service.
Sergeant McFadden, currently working out of the Huntmar station, has previously been a part of the Ottawa Police tactical unit.
Mcfadden is also living out one of his childhood dreams of being a cop in a city he grew up in.
“As a little kid, I remember a police officer coming in, I was playing video games in Bayshore, and he was so tall. He was about 6 feet tall but he looked about 10 feet tall because I was so little, and I go to my buddies and say, ‘wow, look at the policeman, oh my god, it’s a policeman, oh my god, he looked at us’, and I’d see him driving past and I’d wave at him and he’d honk his horn,” said McFadden.
“So now, I’m that guy, and kids are waving and I’m waving back, and I might throw on the lights,” he added.
The tactical unit is the police unit that helps the police, and in the United States, and on television, is better known as SWAT.
While members of the tactical unit help enforce the Highway Traffic Act and the Criminal Code, they also serve high-risk warrants, conduct vehicle stops of high-risk vehicles, and deal with barricaded people, among other things.
The process of becoming a tactical officer involves a psychological evaluation, interviews, job-specific tests, a selection week, and a four-month course.
From the 70 applicants at the start, six officers make the team after the course.
The first time McFadden was the point officer for a warrant, something funny happened.
The team, consisting of seven members for a warrant, went to do reconnaissance on a drug dealer’s apartment building.
The drug dealer and his girlfriend were out at dinner, and after they left, they got arrested by the surveillance team.
“We ended up getting the greenlight and they said, ‘okay, we’ve got the suspects in custody right now, so you’ve got the green light to go and hit that door,’” said McFadden.
“So, we ended up breaching the door. I go in, and I’m first in on point. It’s totally pitch black in the house, and nobody’s there. And then I hear popping, like pop, pop, pop, and then I can hear laughing, and then the lights go on, and all this confetti in the air… we had walked in on a surprise party,” McFadden added.
When they later looked at the warrant, they realized it had been written on the suspect’s birthday.
People for the party were still arriving after McFadden and his team had walked in on the party, and the new arrivals thought the tactical team was the entertainment.
Along with that, McFadden has also had the chance to go to Dubai with the tactical team.
Each year, international tactical teams compete at the United Arab Emirates SWAT challenge in five different events.
“They had never had a Canadian team, and the Dubai prince actually paid for us to go out to to do the competition,” said McFadden.
McFadden and the Ottawa Police’s tactical unit went and represented Canada at this competition in 2020 and ended up placing 18 out of 46 teams.
The competitions in the challenge are hostage rescue, down officer rescue, sniper/rappel event, gasmask course and an obstacle course.
“We flew out there with all of our weapons and equipment, and we had a day to acclimatize and figure out who’s doing which competition, because each competition consists of five officers, so we always had two spares and we had to rotate those officers in,” said McFadden.
McFadden competed in the hostage rescue, the down officer rescue, and the sniper/rappel event.
As well as enjoying the fact he was in Dubai, McFadden also really liked bonding with all the different officers at the competition.
“We all do a common thing, we might have different weapons or different techniques, but our job is the same, so bonding like that, that was a very rewarding experience,” said McFadden.
Currently, McFadden is no longer on the tactical unit. He is now back working on the frontlines as a patrol officer in the west end of Ottawa.
As a former football player, McFadden has likened the camaraderie of policing to being on a football team.
“We get geared up in the locker room, we do parade where we do roll call and go over who’s in what zone, and you have a couple laughs before going out on the road,” said McFadden.
On patrol, McFadden does everything from fatal collisions, to fires, to vital-signs-absent calls. He has even responded to a flooded apartment.
“We responded because there was a bit of a language barrier and we didn’t know what was going on, so we get in and his toilet is overflowing and there was about a foot of water,” said McFadden.
While McFadden sees the best in people around the city, he also sees the worst in people. And sometimes seeing the worst in people, is mentally rough.
“I want them to see us as people. Because people see just this uniform, but in this uniform, there’s actually a person,” said McFadden.
“I don’t bottle anything up. I talk about it. I’ve got really good friends that are in the police service, that I work with, and I have other friends outside of policing as well, and I have my family,” he added.
Over the course of his career, McFadden has had many challenges. One such challenge has been getting called in to work sometimes at two in the morning and being on a 19-hour shift when he was on tactical.
Among the challenges, though, McFadden loves being an officer and interacting with the people in Ottawa.
“I went to a call at Holy Trinity, and I saw a teenager with an Ottawa Sooners jacket on, and I was like, ‘hey, Sooners! I played Sooners!’ And he kind of looked at me, like holy smokes, that’s not just a policeman, that’s somebody in a uniform that has history. And I was like, ‘I played 94-95,’ and he was like, ‘I played this year,’ and we were going back and forth,” said McFadden.
Looking forward to the future, McFadden would be happy with anything. He has about 10 years left in his career, and if he moves up the ranks to staff-sergeant, if he goes back to tactical, or if he ends up at teaching professional development, he’d be happy.
“There are so many things to do in policing, it’s like your own little city. For me, I love being out on the road, and I like training too,” said McFadden.
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