Last week a pair of employees were terminated from the Moose Jaw Police Service.

On Saturday the Police Service made that information public stating that they had let two people go who were in civilian positions within the department. The incidents were brought to light when a public complaint was filed back in Autumn, following that officers conducted a thorough investigation and brought forward their findings at a board of police commissions meeting. As a result of the actions taken by those employees, the decision was made to terminate their employment with the police service. 

"In each case, the employees had access to information that they should not have access. In one of the cases, that information was also provided to people outside of the police service," explained Chief Rick Bourassa. "Both of those are unacceptable. We know people give us information with the expectation that we hold that information in confidence. We need to live up to that expectation."

He went on to say that in almost all scenarios a person with the ability to check private information at the police service or a swore in officer, should never be sharing the information they see or hear while on duty. 

"We can't have that. We have to be accountable for our actions and we have to hold the highest standards for maintaining confidentiality and the privacy of individuals. Now we do know that there are times we have to disclose that information, particularly in court proceedings, and I think everyone understands that."

 In some cases the Police Service will share the names of the people behind certain incidents, Chief Bourassa said that won't be happening with this situation. 

"We carry the role of 'employer' and we carry the role of 'investigative body'. These terminations were done in the role as an employer so those are human resource issues that we don't talk about publicly. Other than the fact that we have taken the action, we won't name people publicly. When we are in our investigative role as a police agency, then we would name people publicly if we had laid charges, as we always do. So, in this case, we were functioning in the role of an employer."

The statement released by Police over the weekend also noted that the people whose information was shared or accessed when not authorized to do so have been contacted by the Police to make them aware of what happened or officers are in the process of doing so.