The Community Safety Officers program for the city of North Battleford will continue on past its initial six month trial period.
At City Hall Tuesday, council voted to give approval to "the implementation of this program as a permanent program." That motion carried unanimously.
The Community Safety Officers program began in July, with officers hired as part of municipal bylaw enforcement. Those officers had taken on functions such as traffic enforcement that used to belong to the RCMP, helping free up RCMP resources to concentrate on more serious offences.
It had been obvious for some time that City officials were pleased with what they had seen of the program and wanted to keep it going beyond the initial six-month term that ended Dec. 31.
Council's approval on Monday rubber-stamped a recommendation made at council's Sept. 22 executive committee meeting to make the Community Safety Officer program a permanent one. The recommendation was conditional upon confirmation from the province that the program would continue beyond Dec. 31.
That confirmation was received three days later on Sept. 25 from Dale Larsen, executive director of the Policing and Community Safety Division, Ministry of Justice.
In his e-mail correspondence, Larsen stated, "the ministry is committed to the success of this program, you and your staff have established a solid benchmark, the Community Safety Officer model we had envisioned."
Councillor Greg Lightfoot referred to that statement in commending the "safety officers and the chief and the city manager for putting this together and doing such a good job. If the province is looking at this positively it's doing a great job."
