Last week the Moose Jaw Police Service received $800,000 from the province to be allocated towards 6 new police officer positions.

Four of the new officers will be assigned to the Combined Traffic Services Saskatchewan initiative to provide traffic safety throughout the city and surrounding region. The other two positions will be on the Police And Crisis Team (PACT).

Moose Jaw Chief of Police Rick Bourassa describes just what the PACT does.

"That combines police officers with mental health professionals who are responsible for providing mental health services in the city and in the region surrounding Moose Jaw...it's great to have that partnership with the Ministry [of Health] on moving these pretty fundamentally important pieces forward."

Bourassa explains that the calculations required to assess the number of officers that a city like Moose Jaw requires are very complex and not just based on current statistics. While the city's crime rate in a number of categories may be lower this year than previous ones, the long term trend still shows a rise in offences.

"Those statical extracts are snapshots in time and we expect fluctuations...We always ask, 'what's the proper level of policing for the city?' We need to be able to properly address issues in the city in an effective but also efficient way. There are lots of considerations that go into what is the proper amount of staffing."

Recently, many U.S. cities have seen calls for the massive responsibilities of their police departments to be reevaluated and redistributed to other public agencies that might be better equipped to deal with certain situations. Bourassa says that those kinds of concerns have been voiced by Canada's police chiefs for years now.

 "We would like to have the participation of other agencies responsible for mental health and social supports that could step more into the delivery of those services into the community...In the police world, we often say that we are not the best equipped to deal with mental health issues and the like. We have been very interested in ensuring that the people with the proper expertise start moving into those areas even more so. That kind of collaborative partnership seems to be very effective."

Now that Moose Jaw's PACT has an additional officer, Bourassa hopes to see the delivery of mental health services improve in the following months.