Even out of his police uniform, casually dressed in shorts and a black T-shirt, Const. Rick Lavallee is an imposing man as he walks through the doors of the Broadway Youth Resource Centre.

Tall and muscular from his six-days-a-week workout schedule, Lavallee has a surprisingly laid-back, quiet presence among the youth here.

He wouldn't have it any other way.

As one of the Vancouver police department's native liaison officers, Lavallee knows wearing a uniform and being pushy isn't going to earn him the respect of native youth -- many of them leery of authority figures, especially police officers.

On this day, at the end of the centre's Breakfast Club -- a service that provides nutritious meals to youth who otherwise might not have one -- Lavallee and 26-year-old Kiel MacDonald head out to chat in private.

MacDonald's involvement with police hasn't always been positive. When he first moved to Vancouver from Nanaimo seven years ago he got drunk, struck a police officer and was charged with assault.

"I was partying and really intoxicated. I don't remember assaulting the cop. I just remember waking up in a cell," said MacDonald, who still drinks but "hasn't got into too much trouble" lately.

Having Lavallee as a mentor helps. While MacDonald tries to avoid police -- he believes they target native youth unnecessarily due to "racial profiling" -- that's not the case with Lavallee. MacDonald is on a first-name basis with the 46-year-old officer. He's worked out with him at the Britannia Community Services Centre gymnasium and gone canoeing with him and other youth in a program called Pulling Together, run by the police and first nations societies.

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