By Andrew de Souza

Prince Albert benefits from more police officers

Mar 2, 2011 | 5:31 AM

The Prince Albert Police Services is able to strengthen its forces in several important areas thanks to funding from the province.

In February, the provincial government announced it was continuing its commitment to fund upwards of 120 police officer positions to forces throughout the province by announcing three more officers for the city.

The province has so far provided about $1.65 million for 11 positions. The city also has seven officers on top of the 11 who are funded from other levels of government.

Prince Albert Police Service deputy chief Troy Cooper said it’s an obvious help for the service and the city to have so many officers funded.

“They provide the funding for it, we do the recruitment, the training and identify the areas of need,” said Cooper.

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“That’s 18 police officers that are not funded by the citizens of Prince Albert and the additional resources allow us to meet the needs of the community.”

Cooper said the extra funding means more officers can bolster the force’s patrols and while allowing more experienced and better trained officers to be used in other areas.

Those areas include the service’s Serious Habitual Offenders Comprehensive Action Plan, the Integrated Street Enforcement team in conjunction with the Prince Albert RCMP, the Child Exploitation unit, the Family Safety unit and the Missing Persons unit.

The province and the service put together contracts about where the funded officers will be used and what benchmarks they will try to achieve, Cooper said. He added that officers have already been shuffled in the department in anticipation of the funding announcement.

“There’s specified distinct programming, but it’s designed around our community needs,” he said.
Cooper added that without the additional funding, these important units would have to shrink or the taxpayer would be asked to shoulder the burden.

“If resources shrink, we’d have to move them to the core programs of our service, which is patrol, or go back to the community for additional resources to cover that gap,” he said.

“But when we have those addition resources from the province we do a scan and review and see where we think we need them most and they can make the most impact and these are the places we put them.”

In addition to the three officers funded in Prince Albert, the province announced three each for both the Regina and Saskatoon service and 21 positions for distribution among the province’s RCMP detachments.

The RCMP said the majority of those officers would go to northern detachments.

The province has said it will fund a total of 120 officers throughout the province.

adesouza@panow.com