Disabled police corporal readies security for 2010 winter Paralympics in Vancouver

From the Vancouver Sun in Canada:

VANCOUVER - Almost 10 years to the day after a gunman's bullet forced the amputation of her lower right leg and profoundly altered her life, Cpl. Laurie White (pictured) still yearns for the thrill of being on the front line of policing.

Then an RCMP constable and now the head of security planning for the 2010 Paralympic Games, White uses her intimate and personal knowledge as a person with a disability to figure out how best to protect the athletes, spectators and officials who will come here in March 2010. It was not always what she wanted.

In the aftermath of Ronald Hoag's reckless attack on her on Nov. 27, 1998 when she went to execute a search warrant in Kitimat, White threw herself entirely into rehabilitation in the hope of returning to full and active duty.

She passed rigorous physical, weapons, psychological, use-of-force and driver tests, and in doing so presented RCMP managers with a conundrum. Never before had an officer with a prosthesis been allowed to return to full service.

Determined not to let the shooting wreck her policing career, White went back to work in Kitimat a year after the shooting and went back to arresting criminals, stopping drunk drivers, and occasionally chasing away the odd bear that wandered into Kitimat's by-the-forests neighbourhoods.

In the years since Hoag shot her and then committed suicide, White has undergone many changes. She struggled with the physical part of her job. Her injury has created complications for her back. But it is the spectre of post-traumatic stress disorder that still makes her wince.

"Post-traumatic stress is a very real, very debilitating disorder and it affects every aspect of my life," she said. "It takes conscious effort to keep those symptoms, those triggers, from impacting me as little as possible.

"The fact that I have a prosthesis never leaves my awareness. I have to concentrate on every step that I take, when I sit, every movement. I don't think that will ever go away," she said. "I still catch myself walking by a window and seeing a pair of shoes or an article of clothing and thinking "Oh, I'm going to get those when I get better."

A few years ago, White left the streets and began to do more management-related jobs. It fit with her life as a single mother of two, and she says she doesn't miss the danger that came with her old job. But she admits she still misses the unpredictability of dealing with the pointy end of policing.

"I miss the adrenalin, the teamwork environment, the excitement, the unpredictability and all of those things," she said.

White, 38, has discovered again a little measure of that unpredictability. In March, she took over as the head of Paralympic security planning at the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit. She now finds herself in control of a process she uniquely understands because of her disability. In September, White was in Beijing to observe the way her Chinese counterparts delivered security for the 2008 Paralympics.

"I think being able to identify with the need of people with disabilities helps. When I was in Beijing . . . I was able to see things from an accessibility point of view and see things from a security perspective," she said. "It was a really great way to make myself aware of some of the challenges that I would have to face and that we as a host country have to deal with."

After the shooting, White learned how to figure-skate again, and has several different prostheses that allow her to live an almost normal life. She cheerfully brags that she's a fast runner now that she has the kind of carbon fibre blade that South Africa's Oscar Pistorius used to set world sprint records.

On Saturday, White will be in Oakville, Ont. to address students at Thousand Islands secondary school, her alma mater and a place where later, as a student teacher, she grew so angry at being swatted on the bum by a testosterone-filled Grade 9 student that she gave up teaching to go into policing.

"I tore after him, grabbed him by the collar and threw him up against the wall and thought, 'What do I do with him now?' I'm a teacher, so nothing. So I decided to become a cop."

White is being inducted into the hall of fame at the same school where her mother and brothers taught, and her father was a guidance teacher. It is an honour that comes in the wake of a raft of other honours, including the Meritorious Service Medal from the Governor General, a Medal Of Valour from the International Association of Women in Policing and a commendation from the RCMP E Division commanding officer.