Police Personnel Are People Too

In May, the PAO partnered with Enterprise, a national strategic communications firm, and Creative Currency, a full-service creative and content studio, to launch a social media campaign advocating for the PAO’s top priorities in the 2022 Ontario election.

These priorities are ensuring that PAO members have access to evidence-based mental health support and resources, along with dedicated and sustainable funding specifically earmarked for hiring new staff to work in frontline areas of need. The goal of the campaign was to have these priorities publicly endorsed or included in the political platforms of the four major political parties.

The messaging and creative design behind the campaign was driven by these key messages:

• Ontario’s police personnel are on the frontlines, keeping our communities safe. • Police personnel are our neighbours, friends and family. Like all of us, they need timely and easy access to mental health supports. • Ontario’s police personnel are there for us.

Let’s make sure we’re there for them when they need it most by providing access to the mental health and wellness services they urgently need.

Building from the “Everyone Needs Backup” campaign, we wanted to highlight the need for increased resources for mental health services for our police and raise public awareness about the staffing shortages that Ontario’s police services are facing. We focused on showing police officers as people who have the same stresses and pressures of life as the rest of us, in addition to their work on the front lines.

Threading the needle between the importance of community safety and support for increased mental health services for our police, this creative work is meant to reinforce the image of people behind the police uniform as people who are part of the communities they protect—coaching hockey, volunteering or grabbing a beer at the local pub.