Board of police commissioners approve request for additional officers

Saskatoon is one step closer to getting eight additional police officers, after the request was unanimously approved by the board of police commissioners at a special board meeting on Wednesday.

The request has been linked to the new safe consumption site on 20th street that will open sometime in the new year, but police chief Troy Cooper, says it isn’t the sole reason for more officers being needed.

“I think that what we saw was that there are different solutions to supervised consumption that we would have tried with less resources initially or with overtime resources initially. We can’t do that,” said Cooper.

“We don’t have the ability to pull overtime resources now and we already needed additional staffing, so this meeting was appropriate whether a supervised consumption was open or not.”

The eight more officers the police requested equates to one more patrol car per shift. That extra patrol car would be mainly focused on the the 20th Street corridor where the safe consumption site will be.

Cooper hopes this will be seen favourably by those who live in the Riversdale and Pleasant Hill communities and eventually lead to stronger relationships between people and the police.

“I guess the message to families that live in that area and the business owners that live and work in that area is that we are doing our best so that they can be safe and so they can feel safe,” he said.

“I think it’s necessary for [the officers] to understand the community. I don’t think you can build relationships unless you know the people you are policing. So for this unit they are going to need to know what it’s like from an addicted person’s point of view what the value of harm reduction is so that when they do respond, they can respond from a common ground and be more responsive to the community there.”

However, Cooper said there’s a thin line between making people feel safe and making them feel like they are being over-policed.

“There’s more police in that neighbourhood per population than in any other part of the city already. And we are adding new resources. So we don’t want the people that are living there to feel they are in a police state, to feel like we are out there and they are going to bump into the police every time they step out of their door,” he said.

“We want them to know that we are there for a specific purpose, we want them to feel comfortable that we are there so it is important how we police respectfully in that community.”

Another concern that was raised to Cooper at the meeting was the idea of unbalanced police presence in the rest of the city. But, according to Cooper, even though the new officers will be more directed at the 20th Street area near St. Paul’s Hospital, the rest of the city will still see benefits from this too.

“I think it’s part of a broader community strategy and a broader community response to the issue around addictions that we are all facing. This is our contribution towards that,” he said.

“It also adds front line responses so everybody in some way feels that net benefit in the same way they do when we add traffic enforcement. Not everybody speeds but everybody does feel some sort of benefit from that sort of resource.”

The next step for the request is for it to be voted on at city hall.

Saskatoon Mayor Charlie Clark voted in favour of moving forward with this request at the meeting on Wednesday but said it is a tough sell to city hall because of the other factors that it impacts for the whole city, like an increased property tax.

“It’s a very tough decision and it’s a very challenging time because of that. I was just in a seniors home yesterday hearing about the concerns around property taxes and the impact that it has on people. We brought in the lowest property tax increase in a decade at this point for 2020, but this puts pressure on that,” he said.

“I also want everybody in the city, whichever neighbourhood they live in, I want them to feel they live in a safe neighbourhood and so this is the balance, this will be the conversation at council.”