Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Barry V. King

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was DELETE. Bucketsofg 18:00, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Barry V. King

Barry V. King (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) - (View log)

This officer heads a police force with only 63 officers. If he is entitled to have his own article, then inspectors/lieutenants in larger forces or army lieutenants should logically also be entitled to have one, since they can easily command the same number of people. The article is written like a eulogy and appears to have been written by the subject, who actually created three identical articles to cover all permutations of his name. All in all, this appears to be a CV for a probably worthy but not very notable small town police chief, of whom there are thousands in the United States and Canada. I would expect a department to have to have several hundred officers before the chief is even considered for an article. Necrothesp 13:40, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete It's his CV, and goes into anal depth. Although obviously very notable for the community he has served, he is not for Wikipedia. The JPS^{talk to me} 14:49, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

RESPONSE FROM Barry King (I hope I am following the appropriate protocol here) NECROTHESP: You articulate a rationale for consideration in that there are only 63 officers reporting to Barry King. However a career of 46 years, and through that career there was a unique variety of service on Federal, Provincial, Regional, Medium city and Small City police services, including very senior positions (and responsibility for planning and implementing Peel Regional Police),Canada's 6th largest police service, with over 2,500 as a Superintendent (3rd highest rank at that time). Subsequent was Chief of a mid sized city police service of 165 (Sault Ste Marie) until retirement, then to Brockville on contract due to a shortage of candidates in the mid 1990"s for Chiefs in Ontario due to staffing retirement cycles. This was not intended as a CV or eulogy, nor an anal depth recital, rather a chronological history in what was believed to be in conformance with the intent of postings on Wikipedia. If there is a legitimate reason that something should be revised or deleted please advise but I don't belive that warrants deletion of the entire posting.Barry KingBarry king 15:15, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Please see WP:Autobiography for the reasons why you should not write articles about yourself. As an example of eulogising from the article: "Chief Barry V. King, O.O.M. has had a distinguished career with an extraordinary legacy. In recognition of outstanding service to the various communities he has served, he has received the following medals and honours" and "A Family that Serves & Protects". These are not really neutral. Please also note that while Sault Ste Marie may have 165 officers, it is a small police service in comparison to many others (e.g. only one territorial police force in England has fewer than 1,000 officers). Do you really think it's feasible or desirable to write articles on every senior police officer in the world? Bearing in mind that most of them will have similar CVs. For chiefs of forces with several hundred officers and deputy/assistant chiefs of forces with several thousand, I would say fair enough, but I'm afraid that neither Sault Ste Marie nor Brockville qualifies as such. As for more junior officers, they are not really notable unless they have done something particularly notable (not just their jobs). For example, I have written a series of articles about the senior officers of the London Metropolitan Police, one of the biggest and most influential urban police forces in the world, with over 30,000 officers. However, I would only consider the Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner and Assistant Commissioners to be automatically notable. More junior officers (many of whom head units considerably larger than the entire Sault Ste Marie and Brockville services put together) would have had to have done something fairly important to qualify for notability. This is my personal opinion of course, which is why I have listed it here for discussion. See Wikipedia:Notability (people) for the general guidelines. -- Necrothesp 16:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Response from Barry King: I should clarify that I did not write the page, it was written by a third party as a compilation of a chronology of my career for a citizen of the year nomination and later for the OOM medal submission. It was suggested that as I was retiring, it should be posted, not because of my being Chief of Brockville, but for achieving 46 years policing career, 20 years as a Chief of Police, the leadership involvements I have participated in, which are all documentsd and verifiable, such as achieving the first WHO (World Health Organization) Collaborating Centre on Community Safety, Designation of Brockville as a Safe Community, which I have Co-Chaired for 10 years, 14 years Leadership as Chair of the Canadian Chiefs of Police Association Drug Abuse Committee where I led presentations to parliamentary committees on legislative changes towards decriminalization of cannabis and use of marihuana for medical purposes, legitimacy of needle exchange programs, my GiC appointment by the Government of Canada, Prime Minister's Federal Cabinet to three, 3year terms as Chair of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (Canada's National Addictions Agency), much of which was extraneous to my job and consumed a great deal of personal time and travel away from work and home. Also speaking nationally and internationally on Drug Policy, atending as part of the Canadian Delegation to the UN on Drug Control Policy in Vienna,conferences in Perth Australia, Venice, Italy and others. Also international Emergency Management and Integrated Incident Command presentations, subsequent to the 1979 Mississauga Train derailment and my role as command post coordinator for the (at that time, prior to New Orleans evacuation) the largest peacetime evacuation in North America of 225,000 citizens and three hospitals for one week due to explosions, fire and chlorine contamination of the souther half of the city. I personally, do not desire nor need to be eulogized and welcome comments if this violates any rules, Your comment on UK policing, however, whereas Chiefs/Commissioners of most police services have 1,000 or more with some as high as 30,000 doesn't apply to the same degree in Canada as I am certain you are aware we have not completed the amalgamation process you have in Europe. We are now in the process, and in Ontario we have reduced from 238 police services to 60 and Quebec is doing the same. We do not suscribe in Canada as a Chiefs Association, that only the few Chiefs of the 15-20 or so major (large sized) Police services can make contributions or are noteworthy. We have 383 Canadian Police Services at this point in time and our Past president of the Canadian Chiefs of Police Association heads a Police Service of 225. I have been on the Chief's Association Executive for 6 years. What may fit in older, larger countries with sizeable, amalgamated police services and where the Commissioners are sometimes Knighted by the Queen, does not necessarialy fit with Canada. I can now better appreciate the criteria you have identified and your concern about adjectives that appear self serving. I will have these areas revised where they appear to do that. The remaining chronological statements are fact based and verifiable. Thank You.Barry KingBarry king 17:48, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The fact that Canadian police forces are smaller is not relevant. Wikipedia covers the whole world and Canada is not a special case. The fact remains that by definition the chief of a larger force is usually more notable than the chief of a smaller force, just as an army general is usually more notable than a colonel. If there are 383 police services in Canada, then it would be ridiculous to have an article for every police chief or former police chief, just as every mayor or fire chief is not notable enough for Wikipedia. Before the second half of the 20th century Britain had many borough police forces, but I would not expect to have an article for each chief constable, only for those of the major cities with police strengths in the hundreds or thousands, who had national influence and prominence. This is also the case in Canada and the United States, where town police forces still exist. -- Necrothesp 18:33, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete Vanity article and NN in wikipedia terms (no slur intended on honourable public service as displayed by the individual in question). --Larry laptop 18:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - Per the excellent reasons given by the nominator. Massive conflict of interest. - IceCreamAntisocial 19:02, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete, fails WP:BIO guideline for notability. Kudos to the policing career, but notability is not a measure of value. If there were any doubt, the WP:COI would tip it. --Dhartung | Talk 20:45, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete This appears to be a vanity article and the subject doesn't appear to have any notability cliams. There may be a conflict of interest issue here, and it looks like an online CV as well. Therefore, it should be deleted. --SunStar Net^talk 20:47, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete, agree with all the above, as well as per unconvincing arguments of Mr. King.-Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 22:10, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. JuJube 01:56, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete No further debate is required. Please delete page a.s.a.p.. Consultant for Barry V. King Anonymous 74.113.164.159 23:00, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.