Despite the CBC puff piece interview of Ottawa Police Chief Vern White on his appointment by the Harper government to the Senate, many will remember him as the chief presiding over infamous police prisoner abuse cases in Ottawa, especially the one involving Tracy Bonds.

Breaking news here in the capital: Ottawa Police Service chief Vern White, who's been the city's top cop since 2007, has been named to the senate.

Today's announcement makes him one of a small handful of police officers in the upper chamber, and the first cop ever to represent Ottawa on Parliament Hill, either as a senator or an MP.

According to a search of Parliament's website, White joins Liberal senator Larry Campbell, Progressive Conservative senator Gerry St. Germain, and former SQ officer Jean-Guy Dagenais—another of the seven appointees announced this afternoon—as the only current senators to have worked in law enforcement.

(Another senator, Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, has been intimately involved with crime victims. Boisvenu founded the Murdered or Missing Persons' Families' Association after his daughter was murdered in 2002.)

Campbell worked with the RCMP's drug squad before becoming the mayor of Vancouver, while St. Germain served as a police officer for five years in Winnipeg and—coincidentally—Vancouver, too. Before those two, you have to go back more than a century to find the only other police officer in the Senate: the Hon. George Crawford McKindsey, appointed by John A. MacDonald in 1884.

In all, there have been 15 police officers elected to the House of Commons, including the above-mentioned St. Germain and Julian Fantino, the former head of the Ontario Provincial Police. None from Ottawa, though.

In a city-issued statement, Mayor Jim Watson said White "worked tirelessly" to improve the safety of Ottawans, while police board chair Eli El-Chantiry said White's efforts "reached beyond traditional policing."

Internet site references:

http://ottawa.openfile.ca/blog/curator-blog/breaking/2012/ops-chief-vern-white-becomes-first-ottawa-cop-ever-parliament

http://www.progressivebloggers.ca/tag/vern-white