Sask police officers facing escalating assaults, violence

It’s a story that is becoming a little too familiar to police, said RCMP Sergeant Eric Desfosses, who is stationed in Prince Albert.

“During the last year alone for the North District, we’ve had 314 assaults on police officers,” he said. The North Districts has 32 detachments.

That includes assault with a weapon, assault causing bodily harm and disarming a police officer.

Numbers have been growing steadily, Desfosses said, with an 80 per cent increase in the last decade across Saskatchewan. The increase is 85 per cent in the North District.

“Over 10 years we’ve seen a major increase and that’s posing a risk obviously to our officers in the streets,” he said.

It isn’t only RCMP who have noticed the increase, Prince Albert Police Chief Patrick Nogier said the city has also seen had a rising number of incidents, with a noticeable jump in 2023.

“For whatever reasons, people seem to have more of a disposition to use force and/or violence against a police officer during the normal execution of their duties,” Nogier said.

Between 2022 and 2023, statistics show an increase of nearly 30 per cent of assaults on officers in Prince Albert.

Neither Desfosses nor Nogier could point to a specific a cause,.

“I think what we’re seeing across the spectrum is that individuals, regardless of their background, …where there’s a police response required, there always seems to be a little bit more controversy, a little bit more apprehensiveness with respect to people allowing police officers to do their job,” Nogier explained.

The violence ranges from someone pushing an officer to using a pipe or a knife or spitting on them.

Danger is not limited to assaults, however.

In 2021, RCMP Constable Shelby Patton died after pulling over Anthony Traverse, who was driving a stolen vehicle near Wolseley in southeastern Saskatchewan. Traverse drove away while Patton was on the running board. Patton fell off and was run over by a back tire, killing him.

Desfosses said that officers cannot know what is going on in the mind of suspects or the public, even for a traffic stop.

“It can be very routine calls even though you do your risk assessment and you’re trying to get the information and like you just mentioned could be a traffic stop where you’re pulling over a vehicle for a traffic violation, there might be more that’s happening in the background,” he said.

The person might have a warrant out or know the police are looking for them and that makes them unpredictable.

“It’s a complete spectrum. But where we need to do a better investment is looking at the potential causation,” Nogier said.

Looking at data trends is helpful. In Prince Albert, the numbers show that there are generally fewer incidents between March and November with incidents increasing in December, January and February.

Potentially, that could be reactions to stress brought on by the holiday season and extra financial pressure, Nogier said.

Dr. Keira Stockdale is a clinical psychologist who spent 10 years working with the Saskatoon police and now works at the University of Saskatchewan in forensic psychology.

She said that violence against police officers began a noticeable uptick right before the start of the pandemic but it’s part of a wider trend.

“It’s helpful to put it in broader context,” she said. “Violent crime in general has been on an uptick.”

If people are using violence more in general when they commit crimes, it follows that they would use it against officers trying to arrest them as well.

Despite the recent increases, incidents are still lower than they were in the 1990s, Stockdale pointed out.

“We need to think about, is this an uptick that’s time limited and it’s going to return to normal because of COVID or economic pressures or other drivers? Or is this something that’s going to continue? I think that’s the question that people have, and people have the right to be concerned,” she said.

What leads people to violence is a complex issue and isn’t always known but that isn’t the only thing to think about.

“It’s important to know that we know what can reduce violence and that is established and we do have good, evidence-based ways of reducing violence,” Stockdale said.

Intervention – individual, community or societal – across the whole criminal justice system can go a long way, she said.

That means catching violent offenders and treating them with a targeted approach.

“Even though we may not be able to isolate or fully know what the drivers are, we do know what some of the solutions are,” Stockdale said.

Over-simplification – such as saying there is more meth use and that leads to violence or COVID caused increase mental health problem or there are more guns available– is not the solution.

The first step is acknowledging the problem.

Then, programs like the Serious Violent Offender Response program come into play. (This particular program happens in North Battleford, Saskatoon, Regina and the North)

It is a partnership between police agencies, the Canadian Mental Health Association, the Ministry of Corrections, Public Safety and probation officers.

The idea is to provide “wrap-around” services from experts in various groups that deal with violent offenders.

“We know if you go to a correctional intervention program designed to reduce violence, it can reduce your violence by something like 25 per cent,” Stockdale said.

For Desfosses, he hopes that people keep in mind that police officers are people and, like anyone else, are affected when they are the victims of violence.

“It’s not OK for anybody to be assaulted and it’s not OK for a police officer. Some people might think that’s part of their job, but its not,” he said.

He encourages other officers to be part of the court process as one way to help bring resolution. The RCMP also has a program that helps officers with Operational Stress Injury (formerly called PTSD).

Like the general public, officers react to being the victim of violence but unlike the general public, they deal with it daily.

“I would say overwhelmingly that when an officer shows up for their shift, that is one of the things that they default to – which situation over the course of a 12-hour shift is going to require me to have to use all my training, de-escalation, use of force, navigate through a very tense situation to ensure that they go home at the end of the shift,” Nogier said.

“I can tell you with some certainty that happens on a day to day basis.”

Johnathin Gardiner died after confronting police while holding a weapon.

Boden Umphervilled was videotaped refusing to leave a car when PAPS officers tried to arrest him.

Germaine Michel drove into police cars, wanted for assault on officers, previously failing to stop, assaulting PAPS officers while resisting arrest.

Terrence Daigneault did not give any warning before opening fire on two officers in La Ronge

Josh McClaren was arrested after an RCMP vehicle was rammed in Onion Lake. Police reported multiple other assaults the same week.

William Henderson was arrested after a seven hour standoff with police

Roderick Ballantyne rammed PAPS vehicles with a stolen city pickup

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com

by Susan McNeil

Sask police officers facing escalating assaults, violence

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