Southwest residents voice concerns during RCMP deployment model consultations

Large audiences turned out throughout the Southwest during seven town hall meetings to discuss how RCMP policing services are delivered in the Southwest.

The series of town hall meetings began on January 13 in Aneroid, and after meetings in Shaunavon, Morse, Leader, Gravelbourg, Maple Creek, the consultations wrapped up with a quieter meeting in Swift Current on January 16.

The town hall meetings were among the first steps in a public consultation process during an RCMP deployment model review. The F Division Deployment Model Study is exploring how best to deploy the RCMP members serving the Leader, Kyle, Morse, Maple Creek, Gull Lake, Shaunavon, Ponteix and Swift Current Rural regions to provide better police service through flexible and scalable staffing plans.

“We simply want to challenge the status quo. How can we making policing better, or at the very least maintain the service that we’re providing for our communities in an ever changing environment,” Superintendent Kevin Kunetzki, District Officer for the South District Management Team stated at the conclusion of the town hall series.

Supt. Kunetzki said the deployment model review is being undertaken to improve services, not in order to close any existing detachments or cut costs.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “We just want to provide the best services that we can. And we want to do that while addressing some of the impacted by issues including the changing forms of crime, a higher crime severity index, along with staffing concerns and issues surrounding the well being of their members.

“I know there’s challenges because I hear them. So the challenges are real. The question is do we have a better way of doing business to best address some of those challenges. That’s the part I don’t know,” Supt. Kunetzki conceded.

He said the F Division study allows them to firstly focus on how to provide the best RCMP deployment model in the Southwest.

“When we’re addressing some of these challenges, I don’t know that we can take a whole province or we can take a whole northwest region of Canada and say ok we’re going to try to apply this. I think when we’re talking about change we have to take baby steps to learn and adapt. So maybe we can make a few changes here. How did they work? So ok that worked here, can we do it now in another area? So it’s always an evolution.”

He admitted he did not hear anything unexpected during the meetings, but he clearly observed that many in attendance were there to voice concerns over the perception that RCMP services were being cut.

“I didn’t hear anything unexpected. Maybe what was a little higher than I anticipated even, and I’m not unfamiliar to Southern Saskatchewan, was the level of anxiety that existed in terms of fear of losing services. And that was higher than I expected.

“Probably that was a part of why we saw so many people come out. Another big part of it is obviously because they care.”

“This is an exercise on how can we do better,