REGINA - Downtown Regina is seeing new officers patrol the streets, helping assist minor cases.
On Thursday, new officers, part of the Alternative Response Officers (AROs), were introduced at the Hill Tower.
The AROs will focus on responding to cases disturbance cases, helping out complex cases and assisting other small needs.
Lorilee Davies, Deputy Chief, talked about the importance of the new officers in the community.
“Our community has lots of complex challenges right now, and so we need to think outside of the box in terms of what is a good fit for our community, and so the AROs are a new way for us to be present downtown, pride that proactive presence and really engage with people who may be facing complex issues and connect them to services.”
Regina’s Police Service introduced the AROs in April. The provincial government and local service provided $300,000 to provide training and salaries in the first year of the AROs.
The AROs do not have the same authority as a regular officer, meaning their responsibilities and salaries are lower.
Davies described their role in the grand scheme of the city’s officers as a “good balance of being fiscally responsible, but yet responding to the needs of the community in a new and different way.”
AROs underwent weeks of training learning about the law, different agencies in the community, self-defence and de-esclections.
One of those new AROs is Special Constable Vlad Grygoruk. Originally from Ukraine, Grygourk immigrated to Canada and has lived in Regina for six years.
His dream when he was young was to work in law enforcement. He felt joining the AROs was a good way to give back to the community and show his gratitude to Canada for letting him become a citizen of the country.
He and the AROs have started patrolling the streets this week as trainers assisted them. However, for most of them, including Grygoruk, their eventual goal is to become a full-sworn police officer, protecting those in need.
During her media scrum, Davies also hinted at the AROs becoming a larger-scale police force in the near future. “I think we'll see how it goes. Obviously, we know with more presence, we think that there'll be a bigger impact. There are many metrics that we're going to be capturing over the course of this year into early next year, and there'll be lots of lessons that we can learn from that data that we're collecting in terms, of you know, what is the most common call for service they're going to how much are they spending their time.”
Recently, the province announced $3 million in funding going towards adding 32 new front-line officers to the RPS.
As Regina continues to grow, Davies said there needs to be more police officers to respond to community needs.
