One thing was made clear this week, there's going to be a lot of progress at the Moose Jaw Police Service. 

The board of Police Commissioners held a meeting on Tuesday morning which was styled like an open house for residents to come to sit in and listen to information, decisions being made and meet or reconnect with some of the people

who make of the Police Service and board. 

The wave of information shared included crime statistics, how the officers and different sectors within the Police Station operate, and what advancements residents can expect to see. It was announced that there are six new initiatives that all the officials in attendance and other members who make up the Police Service intend to improve on or create. 

"We have a strategy moving forward to deal with some mental health needs within the community, we're introducing a social worker to our Police Service to work along with our Police Officers to address child protection issues," explained Deputy Chief Rick Johns. "We are looking at, no pun intended, piloting a drone project where we have flight school occurring right now involving some members of the Police Service, so we can use technology to aid us a little bit more."

The K9 unit alone has just recently grown double in size, as the Deputy Chief mentioned there's currently officers away getting education to become pilots in drone technology, with the help of provincial funding they will be forming a team that will handle child abuse cases more in-depth, a Police Crisis Team is being established to deal with civilians mental health issues and provide them with proper support, and there will be more work surrounding gang violence to combat growing issues that sometimes connect back to drugs. 

Chief of Police Rick Bourassa lead the presentation going over various pieces of information and shared that's he excited about the outcome of some growth being made in mental health strategies and also with proactive supports surrounding families in need of social services. 

"A lot of times we will investigate pieces that don't necessarily cross the threshold into criminal abuse, but there will be some behaviors that really need to be addressed within family situations. For us to be able to work more closely with our social services partners to make sure the proper supports are put in place when we encounter those situations, I just see the value and the impact of that being significant for us."

Two officers quickly stole the show upon entering the room, which was the newest four-legged recruits to the K9 Unit within the local force who were only on their second day of training. With the new additions, that means this sector of the Police Force doubled as current Officers get trained as handlers for these animals. Chief Bourassa said there was plenty of reasons as to why they bumped this number up. 

"We looked at the deployment model and we thought for a bunch of reasons, not only for the K9 Unit but just pure deployment... there's not full-time K9 work, they don't need to be doing K9 work all the time when they're at work. So this allows us to have them deployed as frontline response officers or patrol officers and then when we need them as K9 officers they are readily available to us."

He also added that this will cut down on overtime hours, as they won't have to call in an Officer who doubles as a K9 handler to come in on his scheduled days off, as well giving them quicker response times during crimes or sensitive situations as there will always be a dog on duty going forward once the pups complete training. 

But it wasn't all positive news as the Chief displayed graphs of information gathered by Statistics Canada, stating that Moose Jaw has the lowest number of funded positions within the province, and our Police Service also deals with as much and as severe situations when compared to Regina or Saskatoon while having the highest case load per member of the force in Saskatchewan. That being said Chief Bourassa said we're a lean, but efficient force and he believes we've made significant improvements in this area in the last few years. 

"We have actually come up in resources, we've gone from 53 members to 57 members in the last four years, so we've increased that. Some of the officers are assigned to other responsibilities (such as) the combined traffic services Saskatchewan responsibilities, but we're also using them locally so we have seen an increase in our resources over the last few years," said Chief Bourassa. "We'll keep working with our board, ultimately it always comes down to a budgetary issue."

He noted that person to person crimes are down, but said person to property crimes have increased... meaning there are more break-ins and thefts lately and reminded those in attendance once again to always lock the doors of your home and vehicle. 

At the end of the presentations, the board of Police Commissioners approved the Capital, Operating and Equipment budgets for the city Police unanimously. The next meeting will take place and residents are encouraged to attend these meetings as a way to stay engaged with our Moose Jaw Police Service. 

The day finished off with a barbecue in the Police Station parking lot, where a group of Officers helped to cook and serve food to residents, while also showing them the equipment and vehicles they use on a day to day basis. The event was considered a positive for both the Police Force and residents alike, as many people spent the afternoon smiling and leaving with a full belly.