A back alley in Midtown (Alison Sandstrom/paNOW staff)

By Alison Sandstrom

Questioning the Curfew

Police union rejects proposed back alley bylaw

Oct 2, 2019 | 5:23 PM

The President of the Prince Albert Police Association is speaking out against a proposed bylaw restricting access to public back alleys and walkways at night calling it “ill-informed.”

Darryl Hickie told paNOW the potential bylaw could violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the money required for signage would be better spent on more front-line officers.

“In the Charter of Rights and Freedoms there are different areas that we as police officers can’t infringe upon,” he said. “Just randomly talking to people in the course of our duty – we do public relations – but if I confront somebody and I don’t have any reasonable grounds to believe that a criminal act has taken place, that’s where it gets very dicey and we’ve seen the carding issue come up where people have been profiled.”

He urged the public to remember that police already patrol back alleys and walkways and respond to calls about suspicious activity or people. He added he didn’t believe the potential bylaw would be a useful tool for police and that it could take the force into legally risky territory.

“I have to question whether the bylaw doesn’t overrule a higher law so it would be struck down. I for one, wouldn’t subject my officers to any area of interaction that would cause a public complaint or a lawsuit against them,” Hickie said.

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At the moment any speculation about the legal ramifications of the bylaw is hypothetical, given that council is currently in the very early stages of creating it. If they continue, the potential bylaw still needs to be drafted and voted on several times.

‘Staff shortages’

Hickie called on city council to fund more front-line officers to deal with rising rates of property crime instead of continuing to pursue the bylaw.

“There’s a lot of times we don’t have the officers on the front line to actually be more proactive,” he said.

The city of P.A. has 103 police officers, but according to Hickie, sometimes as few as five of them are on patrol at one time, due to training requirements, holidays or sick time.

“We have staff shortages that need to be addressed by our city council and our Board of Police Commissioners,” he said.

Deputy Police Chief Jason Stonechild said he believed P.A. has “a really healthy compliment [of officers] for a city our size.”

“It’s not a healthy compliment when we consider how much crime occurs in this city, but we have a bunch of professionals who work extremely hard,” he added.

Stonechild said that’s he’s confident that any bylaw approved by council would be “well-researched.”

“If it were invoked, we would make sure that our officers understand the consequences of using such power, and we must ensure that we use ethics and transparency when applying it,” he added.

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alison.sandstrom@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @alisandstrom