MOOSE JAW — “I grew up in Moose Jaw. I never locked my doors. I never thought this type of stuff would happen,” Sergeant Taylor Elder of the Moose Jaw Police Service (MJPS) told a special meeting of Moose Jaw City Council.
The MJPS was at the council budget meeting to present their 2023 Budget to Council.
A request which would see the MJPS spending a budgeted $13,439,566 which, when predicted revenues of $1,658,507 are included, will see the MJPS spending $11,781,059 or an increase of 5.49 percent ($612,933) from the $11,168,126 for 2022.
It works out to a 1.84 percent increase in the municipal mill rate.
An increase the MJPS told Council is needed to finally have the resources and the funding to attack drugs, guns and gang driven crime waves the city has been experiencing over the last few years.
Last year the MJPS requested a 5.58 percent budget increase to help in the fight against rising crime.
Elder, who is a 13-year veteran of the MJPS, described it as a situation that has just exploded over the last six months after 12.5 years of relative calm.
“We rarely saw a gun. We maybe saw a gun now and again but in the last six months I have had to text my wife twice to say shots fired…I’m OK,” Elder said, adding “I just wanted to put that point down and let everyone know we are doing our best to keep the city of Moose Jaw safe.”
“The Friendly City isn’t what it used to be anymore. The trends are changing; we are having dangerous people come from out of town and set up shop and really, you know, put our public safety in jeopardy.”
— SERGEANT TAYLOR ELDER SPEAKING TO COUNCIL
Elder’s thoughts about the severity of crime that has been showing its ugly head that needs to be dealt with was a message backed up by Chief Rick Bourassa.
“This is the direction we have been moving in to keep our community safe. We have had some of these issues that have been there for awhile but now we are able to deal with them and bring them out into the light,” Chief Bourassa said.
Bourassa would go on to list the various other concerns the MJPS is attempting to deal with which ranged from rampant child exploitation, to gangs, drugs (crystal methamphetamine) as well as the modern resources needed to help keep officers on the street and not in the police station filling out reports.
For Sergeant Elder, the tactical team is one of the keys to cleaning up the streets.
“So now with the addition of the tactical response team, we now have better equipment and some officers who are trained to deal with these high risk offenders and offences…these are things that are happening everyday…but all of these jobs we were doing [are now being done] off of the side of our desk,” he said.
It needs to be noted the MJPS largely developed its Tactical Team capabilities in an opaque environment and did not publicly announce the expenditures (a reliable confidential source told Robert Thomas; the amount spent was $100,000) or advances in the team’s formation.
Attempts to find out the reasons for the team to be formed by way of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were thwarted by simply redacting entire reports.
Elder asked for more resources to help keep up with the changes and growth in crime in the community.
“We are here to ensure public safety. All of our officers are wearing two, three and four different hats and we are doing our best to maintain public safety but it is getting harder and getting more difficult to keep up with the trends.”
The MJPS is requesting two additional officers to be funded by the Province to help deal with the policing challenges being felt at the present time.
For Chief Bourassa keeping up with the criminal trends and the MJPS doing a more efficient job entails a larger than normal capital expenditure this coming year.
Technology Upgrades Seen As The Key To Efficiency - Cost $235,000
The MJPS is asking for two main technology upgrades in the budget request - computer enabled dispatching and the police being able to fill out reports in the field using the laptop computer in their vehicles.
The computer enabled dispatch will allow for photographs, descriptions and other information to be sent directly to officers in the field. Officers will not have to return to the police station to pick up the information.
“Everything will be controlled by computers and the transfer of information will be so much more enhanced then it is right now,” Chief Bourassa said.
The other ability technology will create is the ability to create police reports in the field and not have to return to the station to file reports.
“This will enable the in car reporting abilities so our officers will be in the community far more than they are now. There will be much less demands on them to come to police headquarters and the building to complete some of this paperwork,” he said.
The MJPS is presently preparing for the upgrades and the majority of the funding would be for licensing the necessary software.
“Our current reporting system has not been updated for several decades,” Chief Bourassa said, adding “and it is very far behind. We have been working diligently this year and we have budget money in there to get that system up to speed where it should be. We anticipate that should be done within the next few weeks.”
“At that point we will be enabled to start moving forward with technological upgrades that will keep our police officers in the community rather than in our building.”
— MJPS POLICE CHIEF RICK BOURASSA
The MJPS want to spend $235,000 in order to bring these technology areas up to speed or introduce them to allow officers to be more efficient and present on the street.
Provincial Pedo Problems
Internet Child Exploitation (child pornography possession, making, sharing and adults luring children on-line) is a major problem in Moose Jaw, Chief Bourassa said. A problem which needs to be addressed first and foremost.
“Internet child exploitation is something we are working on. We have two members trained and equipped to do that. We believe additional (provincial) resources would be very helpful,” he said.
Having more officers has allowed the MJPS to start to tackle the very labour intensive drugs, firearms and gang activity in the community.
“It involves a lot of work behind the scenes in terms of gathering intelligence, surveillance and doing all of those things that we have to do to get some of these issues. With the resources we have been provided over the past little while, we have been able to get the appropriate number of officers in place to start to tackle those issues,” he said.
Sergeant Chad Schesky said the Criminal Investigative Section (CIS) is attempting to focus on the growing issue of narcotics in the city.
“We are really trying to put our focus into the drug trafficking and trafficking related offences along with the weapons offences including illegal firearms,” he said.
He said the unit spreads constables in CIS to many areas and “they wear many hats.”
CIS liaises with Child Protection and Social Services and the unit “averages one investigation a week through them. Which is basically responding to the safety of children. And at times we have had three or four of these intakes within a week,” Schesky said.
“As you can imagine crimes against children, because they are at risk, those will take priority and that will divert our attention away from some of the other things that we have been working on.”
The addition of a full time constable in 2022 has lead CIS to several high profile busts he said including the trafficking of 22,000 illegal cigarettes, the seizure of firearms and the recent seizure of 850 grams of methamphetamine, other drugs, a handgun and over $6,000.
“Guns and drugs are now together and with that we have created a tier B team (to deal with it)”
— SERGEANT CHAD SCHESKY
He said the addition of the Tactical Team helps to ensure officers in CIS are safe for things like warrant executions.
Bourassa said that the guns and drugs being found is “not something brand new. It is something we are finding and able to address.”
“A lot of data you are hearing is we have the resources to tackle these challenges now. When we were getting into this in the past, part of the challenges were not only did we lack some of the investigation resources…the tactical resources we needed because as Chad has said there very often is firearms in high risk situations.”
He went on to state the MJPS “needed the tactical capability and we built several years building that tactical capability…the two have to work hand in hand,” he said.
It needs to be noted that this is the first real admission guns have been in the hard core criminals’ arsenal for years and no public warning had been issued.
It also needs to be noted the MJPS did not raise the alarm regarding the prevalence of Meth and gangs in 2015 when they reappeared and waited until 2019 to make it public.
Bourassa pointed out that crime is not contained in one place but it is transient in nature.
“So much of that is not contained within a geographical area. Everything is spread out across regions so we work very closely with police departments across the province. And actually across the country, so we are asking for another officer from the province to focus more on these crimes with our other provincial partners,” he said.
