Saskatoon’s police service may have to pull officers from the drug and gang units to tackle downtown safety concerns, according to the city’s police chief.
“This is going to come at a cost to our service,” Chief Clive Weighill told media Friday.
“We’ve got a real dichotomy here. We’ve got an increase in drugs and gangs and now we’re faced with having to pull people out of our drug unit, out of our gang unit, out of our schools, out of the traffic units to put back in regular patrol duty.”
Public safety concerns have been raised recently following a couple of random attacks in the city. Weighill said redeployment has been in the works for quite some time and that the service is hoping to transfer 24 officers back to patrol — the unit that will respond to 911 calls and walk beats.
Several of the officers will be assigned downtown.
“We’re going to have a little bit higher visibility and try to make people feel safer in the downtown core of the City of Saskatoon,” Weighill said. “The last thing we want is people not feeling safe downtown.”
Police need the ability to respond to all calls, even if they are not crime-related, he said.
“Our top 10 calls for service, none of them are crimes.”
Most are calls about suspicious people, disturbances and noisy parties, for example. “More nuisance-type calls that people are concerned about, but we have to have officers to respond to those calls.”
The service is hoping to put the redeployed officers back on the street July 1, he said.
