By Ryan Pilon

Family unit gets new section head

Jan 11, 2011 | 3:37 PM

The Prince Albert Police Service's Family Safety Unit has a new man in charge.

Sgt. Brent Kalinowski is taking over the unit.

He's been with the Prince Albert police for his full 25-year career and for the last eight years he's been in criminal investigations with the Street Crimes Division. He said he made the change because he wasn't seeing gains being made in that division.

“I’ve been doing the same thing for years and here I am 25 years later still doing the same thing. So there needed to be a change, and I wanted to be a part of that,” said Kalinowski.

The unit began in 2010, with the goal to monitor and decrease domestic violence, missing persons and problem homes by focusing on prevention.

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“One particular home in Prince Albert we attended to almost 100 times in 2010 [for domestic violence]. A total of 350 attendances to that same residence in the last five years. It’s almost embarrassing to give you those stats right now, because here we are 350 times later and we haven’t done anything about it,” said Kalinowski.

“That’s part of thinking differently, looking at this place, and seeing what else we can do other than the usual going, taking somebody out of the house, and dealing with it just on that day.”

The unit works to include partnerships and sharing of information with other agencies.

The unit was created before the police service’s trip to Scotland. However, they plan to apply some aspects of what they learned from Glasgow’s violence reduction unit, which had successfully reduced crime in the area by focusing on prevention.

rpilon@panow.com