Last week the City of North Battleford announced two new community safety officers are being deployed.
The additional officers are being tasked with enhanced bylaw enforcement, which means they will continue with familiar municipal bylaw functions including writing tickets, but their duties 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.
The idea is for the minor calls, now attended to by RCMP, to be handled by the safety officers in order to free up the detachment's resources to deal with more severe matters and to further crime prevention initiatives.
It's another proactive step in joint efforts by the RCMP and the City to deal with the community's public safety issues. And in this case the province seems to be getting the message about the community's need for extra resources to deal with those issues.
The new officers are being funded to the end of December in what is described as a provincial government "pilot project."
The six-month trial will give the City and RCMP an opportunity to prove provincial support for stepped-up crime prevention initiatives is needed and effective.
Six months is also the period in which Herb Sutton's position as the City's community program co-ordinator can illustrate to the province the need for that position to continue in the long term.
Sutton accepted a six-month contract in late June. One of his jobs is to create a business case for funding of HUB initiatives in the community. In other words, to convince the government to name North Battleford as a Centre of Responsibility, making local crime prevention initiatives eligible for provincial funding.
Perhaps with a combination of provincial support and local initiative the powers that will get the message these initiatives are making a difference and deserve the province's support.
