Saskatoon’s Police Chief says 2021 felt like it was three years long.

Troy Cooper says one of the police programs they rolled out in 2021 to address concerns around crime and safety downtown included A-R-Os or Alternate Response Officers.

As well the PACT team, or Police and Crisis Team, was expanded from two teams to three teams. The PACT units pair a police officer with a mental health professional.

In 2021 there were approximately 480 police officers on staff at the Saskatoon Police Service with 49 funded by either federal or provincial government. Chief Cooper says the province funded a lot of the specialized programs they have within the police service.

The Saskatoon Police Service also requested an additional 14 staff with two paid for by the province and for 12, who were police officers, the responsibility for funding fell to the city.

A common phrase heard in 2020 was “defund police”.

Chief Troy Cooper says they took that as meaning redefine the role of police and have consequently directed more funding to partnership needs in 2021 around mental health and addictions.

There were seven homicides in Saskatoon in 2021 as compared to 12 in 2020 and 16 homicides in 2019. Cooper says the police service tries to address serious violent offences by looking for patterns and causes, gang related homicides, drug related homicides, domestic violence related homicides but have discerned no pattern in 2021.

The Chief says in 2021 they saw a slight increase in violent crime overall, and a slight decrease in property crime. There was a four per cent increase in calls for service much of it being related to social issues like addictions and mental health which he suggests is a natural fall-out, in part from COVID, due to restricted access to supports for marginalized communities.

Chief Cooper says firearms calls related to the drug trade have been a challenge for the Saskatoon Police Service for the last 2 years. He says they seized around 340 firearms at different calls for service which is significantly higher than previous years and those firearms are often linked to the drug trade and street gangs.

In addition, he says some of those practices adopted because of COVID were really valuable and they’ll be hanging onto them. For instance, they are maintaining their capacity for reporting on line which ramped up in 2020 and will be expanding in 2022.