Staff members who work for the Saskatoon Police Service have been tested for COVID 19 and all have tested negative, at this time. However, a number of staff members did have to self isolate because of travel.

Saskatoon’s Police Chief says they have the least amount of people in their building as possible and early after COVID 19 was declared a pandemic, the police service closed their Service Centre to the public and switched services to on-line as well as an expectation of taking more phone calls. They have also cut back on the amount of finger prints they take in the building.

Chief Cooper says having officers in self isolation has been augmented by taking low priority calls over the phone or online and have move some of the Traffic Unit officers, as well as officers involved in community relations initiatives, into the front lines. And they have reduced training and travel so the time spent on those endeavors have also been re-directed to the front line.

He says they have seen a number of people get calls or emails requesting banking information or personal information and as soon as those requests pop up you should always be very cautious.

In fact they received more than a 100 calls in one day from people who had been contacted with the perpetrator demanding sensitive information saying there was a warrant out for the arrest of the Saskatoon resident they had contacted. And Chief Cooper points out this is coming at a time when people are already anxious and in a fearful state because of COVID 19.

As far enforcing the self isolation directive from the Public Health Authorities, Chief Cooper says up to this point supervisors have been reviewing the complaints and what actions they take for instance something they can address through a phone call or an email or a social media action…

“If it is something we need to turn over to public health partners, we do that, if it is something egregious where perhaps a positive tested COVID person who is not isolating, that is something we would address immediately.”

Saskatoon’s Police Chief says they have had 100% voluntary compliance when they have attended and responded to reports of people not self isolating.