By Trevor Suffield
Jan. 15, 2009
Alfredo Bangloy Jr.'s father isn't surprised that his son has made a living out of catching bad guys.
Alfredo Sr. still remembers the night when his son was in high school and was coming home late with his older brother and witnessed a mugging in progress.
The brothers chased down the mugger and held him until the authorities came. The police later commended them for their efforts.
Bangloy, a veteran RCMP officer, was recently promoted to the position of inspector and is now the officer in charge of the Mounties Professional Standards Unit in Ottawa.
Born in Mayoyao, Philippines, Bangloy moved with his parents and older brother to the ethnically diverse West End of Winnipeg when he was two years old. He also has two younger brothers.
An avid athlete in high school, Bangloy put sports on the back burner when he started working part-time at a pizza restaurant during his Grade 11 year.
Thinking they could run the business, Bangloy and his brother bought Mr. Marcos Pizza on Ellice Avenue the following year with some financial assistance from their father. They operated the business for three years.
My last two years in high school could've been better if I wasn't working so much, he joked.
In fact, business was so good that the Bangloys opened another restaurant. However, they didn't anticipate the demands of running two businesses and ended up selling them both.
It was around that time, and with his parents support, that Bangloy was accepted into the RCMP. His training took him to Montreal and Regina.
Bangloy eventually married a fellow RCMP officer, Trudy, and they have two children together.
Ron Cantiveros, publisher of the Filipino Journal, said that policing wasn't a job that most Filipino parents wanted for their children in the past. That view has changed over the years, he says.
Nowadays it's whatever you aspire to be and this is just one perfect example of someone who wanted to follow his dreams to be in the police force, Cantiveros said.
Following graduation, Bangloy was posted in Vancouver and was stationed there for eight years. He worked for the drug division and emergency response team and often performed undercover duties.
At the urging of a senior crown prosecutor in Vancouver, Bangloy decided to take an unpaid leave of absence from the police service to attend law school at the University of Manitoba.
There's never a good time to leave your job, and we had two kids at the time and Winnipeg was pretty much the only place we could financially afford to do it, he said.
They stayed with his parents during the three years he was in the program. Bangloy's mom, Belen, was happy to have her son and his family in their house.
We preferred that they come and live with us, Belen said.
Upon graduation, Bangloy and his family moved back to Vancouver where he worked in national security for the RCMP.
Armed with a law degree and his recent promotion, Bangloy is now hoping to establish some roots in Ottawa.
My family is quite settled here in Ottawa, and I like it, so I'll probably try to stay here until my kids are done high school, he says, adding that he'd like to get back into the operational work he did in the past.
Cantiveros says it's important to recognize the impact of having a Filipino in such an important position.
I think to be part of the RCMP as a Filipino-Canadian, or even a Filipino that grew up in the West End, absolutely it's a positive mark for role models in the community.
Despite his ties to Winnipeg's Filipino community, Bangloy says he doesn't see himself as a role model for any one particular segment of society.
It's not something that I consciously think of, he said. I just think of being a good role model to the community in general.
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