Downtown safety initiative underway in Saskatoon: SPS

Saskatoon’s downtown core will see some additional police presence in the next two weeks.

According to Saskatoon Police Service (SPS) Acting Staff Sgt. Andrew Kiesman, an enforcement initiative is underway from Oct. 28 to 31, and Nov. 4 to 7. He told 650 CKOM’s Brent Loucks Thursday that this isn’t uncommon.

“A lot of the perception is that we don’t do this a lot, and we do have initiatives that we’re constantly doing within that downtown neighbourhood. This one happened to catch a little bit of attention,” he explained.

In the summer, an SPS initiative called “Walk With the Purpose” included reutilizing school resource officers downtown throughout the summer months.

Kiesman also explained the reasoning behind the initiative.

“We saw (that) we could probably move into this area in a different time of year that we’d normally… it’s just because we’ve been working with our analyst and moving into 2021, we’re looking at developing some new strategies (in the central division),” he said.

“It’s just us being there. It’s no secret.. we really mandated (in) being in that downtown area, and not just enforcing. But meshing with all walks of life, even our vulnerable sector.”

Kiesman said typically, two beat officers, two bike officers and additional contingency and patrol officers police the downtown core.

“This initiative basically adds two beat officers for certain time frames of the day. Usually, kind of mid to late afternoon, and into the evening hours,” he said.