WEST getting more officers in Saskatchewan

Policing is expanding even more in Saskatchewan.

The province is expanding the Warrant Enforcement and Suppression Team (WEST), which came into existence in 2021 as a part of the RCMP’s Saskatchewan Enforcement and Response Team (SERT).

Funding for eight officers for WEST was provided in 2021 throne speech. In the 2022 throne speech, the province added eight more officers to the unit.

“They focus on the apprehension of fugitives, so those people who are at large for very serious offences and prolific offenders that are at large in the community. (WEST is) taking them, arresting them on their warrant status and then bringing them before the justice again,” Supt. Glenn Church, an officer in charge of SERT, told Gormley on Thursday.

“It’s very well known that there are a large amount of warrants and folks on warrant status in the province. Our team, as a result of having a finite amount of resources, really need to triage those individuals and focus on the most dangerous ones.

“The folks they are focusing on right now are those individuals out on warrant status for things like murders, manslaughter, shootings and other various violent activities because those people pose the greatest threat to our community safety.”

Church said the WEST teams were in Saskatoon and Meadow Lake with a new unit being created in Prince Albert as well.

“As a result of that team being part of the larger SERT umbrella, what they are able to do is draw on their colleagues for support,” Church said.

Church said that since WEST was created in 2021, there have been 34 apprehensions made by its officers.

SERT has a few different units that fall under its command. That includes crime reduction teams in communities.

“They focus on being visible in the communities and creating gang suppression efforts. That’s their focus. They have a larger mandate for enhancing community safety — a general and broad mandate — but that’s their bread and butter to be visible in the communities and suppress gang activities in those vulnerable communities,” Church said.

The teams are also highly mobile.

“Depending on where the current threats are to communities in the province, (the WEST officers can) move and address those threats as necessary,” Church said.

Another unit being worked on is the Trafficking Response Team.

“They are focused on targeting the most sophisticated organized crime groups in the province and also groups that move interprovincially. (Those officers) have some specialized skills,” Church said.

“These are teams you won’t see in the public and will be operating in a covert manner — things like wiretaps, undercover operations and the like — to dismantle organized crime groups.”