HIGH MARKS FOR POLICE
Public satisfied, survey shows
Regina police Chief Evan Bray is pleased a recent “report card” on the Regina Police Service shows a sampling of the community gives the force high marks.
Bray said there’s always room for improvement, but results from the latest community perceptions of the Regina Police Service survey was very positive.
“Even in the areas where we could improve, there was some real positive trends there,” he said.
University of Regina professors Nick Jones and Rick Ruddell from the department of justice studies designed the study. Prairie Research Associates surveyed 462 Regina residents by phone from Sept. 5 to Oct. 2.
This year, people self-identifying as Aboriginal were slightly overrepresented in the survey (10.5 per cent) compared to 9.4 per cent in 2016.
“This was by design,” Jones said. “There were some concerns noted over the past three cycles that just doing this randomly was not giving sufficient voice to First Nations people in the city.”
Respondents were asked about their perceptions of RPS’s public information and social media, visibility/presence, contact/responsiveness, quality of service plus their fear of crime and trust/ confidence in RPS.
Trust and confidence in the RPS has been consistently high since the survey began, Jones said.
“Higher levels of trust and confidence are important,” he said. “I would actually argue that they’re vital to the successful operations of a police service as it gains the co-operation of the citizens in law enforcement.”
Mayor Michael Fougere, who also heads the board of police commissioners, is pleased the community survey showed increased public trust and confidence in the police since the first surveys were conducted between 2005 and 2009.
“Those results are really quite meaningful,” he said. “We know there are specific areas where crime is getting worse and in some cases, like drugs and guns, more severe. But the work done by the police service is really being noticed by residents and this recognition that we have more officers on the street is important.”
He noted only two per cent of survey respondents rated police service as poor, down from 35 per cent in 2011.
The approval rating from Indigenous respondents was not as high for understanding issues in their community as non-Indigenous residents (3.67 out of five compared to 4.03) or sensitivity to their ethnic group (3.44 compared to 4.19 of non-Indigenous people).
When asked about their confidence in the RPS when calling 911, the average of Indigenous respondents was 4.28 compared to that of the non-Indigenous at 4.63.
“We know there’s more work to do to build those confidence levels and trust” Fougere said.
More than four-fifths (81.5) of respondents somewhat or strongly agreed that the RPS was an organization with integrity and honesty, and 81.9 per cent somewhat or strongly agreed the RPS demonstrates professionalism in its work.
More than three-quarters (78.8 per cent) ranked the overall quality of service provided by the RPS as very good to excellent.
Over three-quarters (76.8 per cent) of respondents reported being highly or very satisfied with the level of service provided by the RPS.
About three-quarters (76.5 per cent) of respondents somewhat or strongly agreed that the RPS is sensitive to the needs of their ethnic group.
“One of the things that we found contrary in other jurisdictions or that we’ve seen in the literature is that the visible minorities — those self reporting an ethnic cultural identity that was not white or Indigenous — actually had the highest levels of trust and confidence in the RPS,” Jones said.
More than nine in 10 respondents (91.1 per cent) somewhat or strongly agreed having confidence in calling 911 in emergency situations.
It’s the fourth biannual study done by the team, replacing an omnibus survey conducted by the city in 2006.