As a police officer walking a downtown beat I investigated thousands of violent offences from assaults, domestics, robberies, rape and murder. I routinely dealt with hundreds of victims, offenders, and alarmed citizens.  Hoping for a break i transferred to traffic only to  deal with over 60 fatalities involving innocent children, teens and seniors caused by drunk drivers or drivers to preoccupied with their momentary situation to avoid the permanent fatal consequences of their actions. I needed to know why people behaved as they did.

A Masters degree later in behavioural analysis allowed me to create a specialized team of profilers and analysts in the Major Crimes Detective Division of the Calgary Police service.  We built case studies on criminals and their organizations. We sifted through a mountain of crime scene forensics to isolate the key elements needed to solve the cases and match them to other crimes across the province. 30 years later the Crime Analysis Unit is still taking an active role in apprehending serious criminals. 

Entering politics these same skills proved invaluable in creating winning campaign strategies that focused on understanding voter behaviour.  I was able to analyze the most cost effective process of delivering voter support. I was also able to immediately see what was not working for the dozens of other campaigns running around me both my competitors and in other wards.  In the last Calgary civic election there was over 100 candidate campaigns for 15 council spots all of which ended more or less as I predicted a month earlier. 

After each election over the last 20 years I would carefully dissect each campaign to fully understand what they did right and wrong based on their team, resources, tools, messaging and money.  It is almost never a lack of money that leads to defeat but a lack of effective use of resources.