Women in policing: For the first time, a retired Hamilton officer has handed down her badge to her daughter

Terri-Lynn Collings and her daughter were on a plane, a mother-daughter trip out west, when Rebecca Collings revealed the decision she'd been weighing for months: she wanted to become a police officer.

I didn't expect her to say that in the moment, but I wasn't surprised," Terri-Lynn recalls of the conversation last year.

She was immediately supportive.

Rebecca comes from a line of Hamilton police officers, including her grandfather and both parents. Growing up, she was always with her mom, including helping at volunteer events such as the Cops for Kids Golf Tournament that Terri-Lynn co-chaired, and she saw the difference even small gestures can make in someone's life. She knew she wanted to find a career where she helped people, but it took her time to figure out what that was.

In some policing families, badges have been passed down, father to son. So when Rebecca was hired by Hamilton Police Service this year (she was given the offer of employment on her dad, Scott Collings', birthday) she wondered if she could do the same. Then she wondered whose badge she should ask for.

The whole reason I wanted to become a police officer was emulated after my mom's career," Rebecca said. It was pretty clear" to her to carry on that legacy with badge #652.

A little over a week ago, Rebecca was officially sworn in as a Hamilton police officer and her mom was at her side. She presented her daughter with her badge, marking the first time in Hamilton police history that a badge has been passed down from mother to daughter.

A lot has changed in policing for women since Terri-Lynn started her career with Hamilton police in February 1987. When she started, she had to change in the public washroom because there was no women's locker-room. She was the only woman in her squad on the Mountain and one of maybe eight female officers working patrol across the entire service.

In Rebecca's graduating class at Ontario Police College this August, seven out of 21 recruits were women.

When I learned (that Rebecca receiving her badge) was a first for Hamilton, that in itself speaks volumes for the next generation in female police officers," Terri-Lynn said.

Sept. 12 marks National Police Woman Day. It is also the start of this year's International Association of Women Police conference in Niagara Falls, hosted by the Ontario Women in Law Enforcement (OWLE), Niagara Regional Police Service and Hamilton Police Service.

As a trail-blazing female officer, things were hard at times, Terri-Lynn said. She had both her children while working as a police officer and recalls the service didn't know what to do with pregnant officers, including what to wear (Terri-Lynn had to wear awful" coveralls). But it was a learning process.

Terri-Lynn spent 30 years with Hamilton police working in patrol, as a community services officer, divisional detective, crime analyst, media relations officer and with the crime prevention unit. She spent the last five years of her career in the crimes against seniors unit before retiring in 2017. She said she never found doors closed to her and it was her choice to not seek out promotions to more senior roles. In recent years, a number of woman have advanced to senior roles in the service, but the ratio of male to female officers is still not equal.

Terri-Lynn and Rebecca are a close mother-daughter duo and often do volunteer work together.

One moment that stands out for Rebecca was from more than a decade ago when her mom was raising money to buy a bike for a guy who kept having his stolen. It was his only means of transportation.

They were going to present the bike to this man at central station and I really want to go and see this bike and see his reaction," Rebecca remembers. She was taken with the idea that a small act can have such an impact on someone's life.

She did get to go and remembers how happy he was.

This is what I want to do in my life," she thought at the time. I didn't say I wanted to be a police officer then, I didn't know what path I would take." But she wanted to help people.

Flash forward to early 2020 and Rebecca and Terri-Lynn were volunteering with Hamilton Out of the Cold. Rebecca was handing out clothing when in walks this same guy. He remembered Terri-Lynn and the bike, smiling as they spoke. It was a full-circle moment.

While Terri-Lynn knew what she wanted to do as a career after a police officer visited her class in Grade 6, for Rebecca the decision took time.

In high school, she won the Ancaster youth volunteer of the year award and continued that through university where she studied political science at McMaster University. After graduating, she worked for a local MP first in his constituency office in Hamilton, where she loved helping people, and then in Ottawa where she got to organize charity events. She learned politics can help people, but often progress is slow. She decided to come back home to Hamilton and took a job at McMaster's advancement department. It was great work, with a great team, but still something was nagging her.

I did a lot of soul-searching," she remembers. Then she realized I want to do what my mom did."

After telling her mom on that plane ride, she told her dad, Scott, while parked in a car outside home. At first her dad couldn't understand why she would give up a great job, but when she told him how much she wanted to help people, he said: how do you say no to that?"

Rebecca's grandfather (Scott's dad) Robert Thomas Collings also worked for Hamilton police for 35 years, retiring as a staff superintendent. He was an incredibly kind man and very supportive of his son and daughter-in-law's careers. He died in 2019 before Rebecca made her decision to become a police officer, but she says she knows he'd be excited and happy.

Police officers were given necklaces with a mini badge as a pendant that usually had their badge number engraved. But her grandfather's had his initials. After he died, Rebecca was gifted the necklace and has had it with her through her policing milestones - she wore it to all her tests and interviews, and it was in her pocket at the swearing-in ceremony.

Terri-Lynn knows her daughter is going to do great things.

After just a couple of shifts, Rebecca said she didn't want to take any days off. She knows she might not always feel that way, that some calls are harder than others. But she's also optimistic about helping people, the same way her mom did, by listening.

Seeing two women in a family able to become police officers and carry out careers ... I hope through all this it can inspire some young girls who might have this passion," Rebecca said.

Nicole O'Reilly is a crime and justice reporter at The Spectator. noreilly@thespec.com