麻豆视频

The provincial government released its plans for reducing crime in rural Saskatchewan last week, highlighted by the creation of the new Protect and Response Team (PRT).

The PRT will boast 258 armed officers who will have arrest and detention powers. Their ranks include 120 police officers from RCMP and municipal police services, with 60 police positions currently deployed to the Combined Traffic Services Saskatchewan (CTSS) units, 30 new police positions, and 30 re-purposed police positions currently funded by the ministry.

Also of note is the PRT will include 40 Ministry of Highways Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Officers (CVEO) and 98 conservation officers (CO).

We鈥檙e admittedly a little skeptical about including the CVEOs and the COs. They play an important part in enforcing those aspects of the law in Saskatchewan.

Hopefully their involvement in the PRT won鈥檛 detract from their duties. The southeast has been fortunate to have numerous dedicated and skilled COs over the year, and they鈥檙e busy enough as it enforcing fish and wildlife laws, among others.

We also hope that the CTSS officers will be able to focus on their jobs. In the two years since the CTSS program was launched in the Estevan area, these officers have been busy enforcing traffic violations in this part of the province.

They hand out a lot of tickets for various violations each week, and have contributed to safer roads and highways for all of us.

But on the surface, the PRT appears to be a positive step forward. More officers will be a good thing, especially in rural Saskatchewan in the 21st century. It鈥檚 great to see Saskatchewan growing and thriving, but the days of having a community every 13 kilometres are over. There are also fewer farms in the province.

Farmers who used to leave their homes unlocked when driving into town for groceries and to pick up the mail have been forced to lock their doors for some time.

This is not an indictment on the RCMP officers and the job they have done policing in rural Saskatchewan. This province has a lot of really good and hard-working members of the RCMP. But there aren鈥檛 enough of them.

The detachments are often short-staffed, and frankly, there aren鈥檛 enough detachments in Saskatchewan, either.

Which brings us to another interesting component of last week鈥檚 announcement. It calls for a review of legislation to allow municipalities to jointly administer alternative policing programs.

If this means that the Town of Lampman and the Rural Municipality of Browning want to consider coming together to have some form of a police service, then this is indeed good news. (We use Lampman and Browning as an example because they already have a number of shared services, and they are a fair distance from the nearest RCMP detachment).

Hopefully, this new PRT will work, and it will lead to rural residents feeling safer.聽