The ranks of North Battleford's peace officers have gotten a boost thanks to some help from the province.
The city announced that the provincial government has granted two additional appointments of special constables/peace officers to North Battleford on a six-month trial basis.
While they are appointed as special constables/peace officers, their official title is "community safety officers." Their appointment brings the numbers of municipal enforcement personnel to five in the city.
According to Mayor Ian Hamilton who made the announcement at City Hall Wednesday, the officers have been granted some increased authority to enforce the law under nine provincial statutes. But they are not to be confused with the 36 RCMP officers in the city detachment, who continue to have a broader range of authority and responsibilities.
The community safety officers will be doing what is called "enhanced bylaw enforcement." It means they will continue with familiar municipal bylaw functions including writing tickets, but it will also include enforcing speed limits around schools and parks, ensuring a visible presence in downtown and recreational areas, and responding to false alarms, vandalism and minor accidents.
"We see a significant part of their responsibilities is visibility," said Hamilton, with "foot patrols, perhaps enhanced foot patrols in the downtown area, car patrols around the school areas, parks, where children congregate and that sort of thing. We want to make sure they are enforcing our rules of the road, especially, around those areas and keep our children safe, and if there are any issues being experienced in those areas like parks and school zones and those sorts of things and they're able to deal with those."
Responsibility for the community safety officers lies with the City, with the officers reporting directly to Fire Chief Albert Headrick. The hours of operation are being expanded as well, from regular Monday-to-Friday hours to include evenings and weekends.
Hamilton say the RCMP will be working closely with the City to develop policies and guidelines for the response to low risk calls by the community safety officers. He thanked Insp. John Sutherland for his assistance in that strategy.
Officials at the news conference Wednesday expressed their belief the additional peace officers with their additional responsibilities will mean the RCMP will be in a better position to dedicate more of their resources towards Criminal Code offences as well as crime prevention.
"We want them to be tending to criminal activity and more serious crime," Hamilton said.
Insp. Sutherland says partnering with the City is "going to enable the RCMP to work closely with the City to provide an alternative response to policing to what we consider a low-risk call," which could be something like a false alarm, a minor motor vehicle accident or vandalism call.
Those calls "consume a lot of our time and those members could quite conceivably be attending to more serious policing calls and issues within the community." Having a peace officer respond would allow them to attend their call, collect the information and get it into their database.
One of the two new community safety officers, Paul Sirman, explains further what residents can expect.
"Basically we're clearing the low-level activities that normally a police officer would be dispatched to," said Sirman. "It keeps the police officers on a higher-level path. We're able to enforce the municipal side of bylaw offences and provincial offences, while police can deal with the Criminal Code offences and criminal activity."
Sirman said a large part of their role will be educating the public on safe practices. Ticketing will be a "small part of that," but a proactive approach is what they are planning.
The reception from the public so far has been positive, he said. Getting used to seeing new faces and new uniforms is a challenge, Sirman admits, but "once we explain it it's very well received by the public."
It is a pilot project. The appointments run to Dec. 31, said Hamilton, and are to be evaluated again at that time.
The City of North Battleford had been seeking additional help from the province towards community policing initiatives for some time, in the wake of persistent high crime severity numbers over the last few years.
"We've been working on this initiative for a number of years to address what is perceived to be a significant crime problem in our city," Hamilton told reporters.
According to Hamilton, a presentation was made by city officials to Minister of Corrections and Policing Christine Tell back in February, at which time the city presented its Community Safety Strategy.
Hamilton commended city council for "demonstrating leadership to all of Saskatchewan in this proactive, visionary type of strategy."
Hamilton called the municipal enforcement strategy only "one spoke in the wheel of the community safety strategy", pointing to Herb Sutton's recent appointment as community program coordinator to help with the community safety strategy, as well as the transitional housing project that is under way.
