VIEW FROM THE TOP
New police chief facing challenges on road ahead
Q What was the most significant challenge you faced in coming to Saskatoon from Prince Albert?
A The makeup of the community. Saskatoon is incredibly diverse and there are key players in Saskatoon that didn’t exist in Prince Albert or that don’t exist maybe in other areas. The biggest difference for me, as far as policing directly, is the fact that Saskatoon is a growing community. So in addition to all of the challenges around policing and all of the challenges around offending, you have to take into account the growth of the city as well. That was something I wasn’t aware would be as big of a deal as it is.
Q Your predecessor Clive Weighill had a strong reputation and was seen as someone who guided this organization on a specific course. Over this year, have you figured out where you want to take it?
A This is the end of our strategic plan; 2019 is the last year in it. So by virtue of that we will do a lot of community consultation over the next year. We’ll be doing a lot of internal scanning. So regardless what I think the organization should look like, the city will tell us as we plan for the next five and 10 years. So I really came in at the right time not only to implement some of the changes I had hoped to see, but to be able to actually ask the community, “What do you want policing to look like five years from now?”
Q A year is not a lot of time in institutional terms, but how do you think you’ve already imprinted yourself on this organization?
A I look at management as being an opportunity to empower people who work for you to make decisions. I prefer to have people who have the authority, who have the budget, who have the information to make those decisions rather than to make it as a group. We’re not maybe managing by consensus as much as we once were.
Q What is the biggest challenge the SPS is facing for 2019?
A I think our biggest challenge, operationally, is to do with (crystal meth) addictions. If we’re going to continue to just simply respond to offenders without looking at the root causes of their offending, without looking at what it is that had them out in contact with police in the first place, I think it’s inefficient. We’re going to have to change how we view people who are addicted and offending and we’re going to have to change our approach to it. But I think we need to add resources in that area as well.
Q You talk about it being inefficient to simply enforce. What does your strategy to deal with that look like?
A We need to have a strategy and currently there isn’t a real, very clear strategy for us and how we fit into the community. There’s a lot of good work being done on that front. In order for us to be really efficient, to be effective, we have to have harm-reduction partners … and to make sure that we’re doing work that complements those other services. Just enforcement alone is not going to be the whole answer.
Q What are your views on safe-injection sites?
A I think there’s more research needed around whether or not a site actually makes them safer, if they can go there to be safe and what the impact in that community is as a result of where those safe-injection sites are located. I think that conversation — it has already started in our province and I think that’s a conversation that will occur over the coming months and potentially years here. Wherever the conversation goes, we’ll give it some careful thought.
Q Cannabis has been legal for more than two months. How has the experience compared
to your expectations ahead of legalization?
A I think the only thing that didn’t meet our expectations is the fact that cannabis is not available in the way we expected it to be on Oct. 17. We really haven’t seen the rollout of cannabis yet. So what will we see as a result of cannabis legalized in our province? It’s too early for us to look for trends and patterns simply because it hasn’t really rolled out yet.
Q In the absence of a roadside test, what has the experience been like when dealing with people suspected of driving high?
A I haven’t looked at the stats in the last few weeks, but in the first 30 days or so we saw the same level of impaired driving prior to legalization than we did after that. Again, it’s so early for us to predict where that’s going to go.
Q What is your view of the upcoming law change that will allow police to administer breathalyzers without probable cause to do so?
A Impaired driving is a real concern for Canadians and it’s a specific concern for people in Saskatchewan. We lead the country in impaired driving rates and so whatever we can do to try and curb that, I think, is important for us to try and do. Regarding how that law will actually work itself through the courts, that’s something … that’s yet to be seen. We understand that there’s concerns early on about constitutional rights, but I think the purpose behind it is well-intentioned.
Q Back in October, the police noted that work was underway on a policy and training for street checks. Where is that process at now?
A We’ll be providing training to all of our officers on contact interviews. They’ve taken some training already, online training from the Saskatchewan Police College, and we’ll be delivering local training. But more importantly, we’re going to look at the training longer term. We’re … going to do some research on making sure the training our officers receive around the community, particularly around the vulnerable population in Saskatoon, that they get that at the right time in their career, that they get the right amount of training so that it increases what we’d hoped to see in cultural competency.
Q This was something of a difficult year for the SPS, in part because of incidents like the dismissal of an officer, a high-profile inquest and problems surrounding the canine unit. How has that affected officer morale?
A I think that morale in policing in general was taking a pretty hard hit over the last little while. We know at the beginning of the year that morale among sworn members was beginning to wane. I think there were some internal issues, there were some local issues, but policing in general also has been scrutinized to a really high degree. Now, we’re doing our best. We have a morale committee here … We’ve done some work in that regard (and) we’re hopeful we can move our service forward and start to address some of the issues around morale.
Q How is community trust in the SPS today compared to a year ago, when you took over?
A We do measure that. Of course, we only measure it every three years, so it’s hard to measure on a day-by-day basis. But we know that currently the community has higher levels of trust for the SPS than they have had since we started measuring. We really enjoy a lot of community confidence and a lot of trust. I think it’s well placed.