A Saskatoon community association asked police to play a more active role in monitoring a neighbourhood on Thursday at a Board of Police Commissioners meeting.
“When police officers look at Pleasant Hill, they see the homeless, Prairie Harm Reduction, people with complex needs, parole violators, gangs, violence, guns and drugs. That is not Pleasant Hill,” said Ruth Reimer from the Pleasant Hill Community Association.
“Pleasant Hill is made up of families trying to break away from intergenerational trauma and give their kids a better life, kookums and moshoms raising grandkids,” Reimer said.
According to the Saskatoon Police Service, 13 per cent of the city’s 2023 homicides have happened in Pleasant Hill as of September as well as 13 per cent of assaults, seven per cent of sexual violations, and 42 per cent of firearm-related offences.
At a Board of Police Commissioners meeting on Thursday, the association asked police to dedicate two alternative response officers towards preventative policing in the neighbourhood as part of a four-year pilot project.
The association said the officers should be “hopefully younger and diverse”.
It requested that the officers spend five half-days per week on the ground in the community and suggested a small office be built in the urgent care centre on 20th Street to support a Pleasant Hill alternative response team.
“Salaries would cost about $200,000 yearly if they work full time for Pleasant Hill. Common sense tells us it would take four to five years before the impact of investment in prevention would be seen in the crime rates of Pleasant Hill,” read a letter from the association to the police service.
The association said the officers job descriptions should include working with the residents of Pleasant Hill to create safe streets, connect with youth, and be present in the hospital and school.
“In addition to investing in prevention, we would like to ask the SPS to consider funding an increase in patrols on 20th and 21st street, between Ave P and Ave R during the hours of 11:30 pm to 1:30 am, keeping our community and hospital workers safe on the dark streets of Pleasant Hill,” read the letter.
At the meeting, former Saskatoon Police Chief Troy Cooper said the board asked administration to consider Community Mobilization Unit Officers to assist the neighbourhood.
“These are fully trained police officers that stay in a community to do lots of non-enforcement contact.”
Cooper said that as an industry leader in alternative response, the board has also asked administration to look into alternative response officers as a solution for the community.
“We talked about the differences and usefulness of some of those different types of police responses and how that might address some of the areas of concerns of neighbourhoods that are under pressure like Pleasant Hill.”
Reimer said the community is also scared the city might try to place one of the new complex needs shelters planned for the city, directly into the Pleasant Hill neighbourhood.
She said that is not something that the community is asking for.
“Haven’t we hosted enough trauma? Help us change the narrative. Give our kids and families a change. Invest in prevention for five years and see if we can make a small dent in the endless, hopeless, cycle of crime being committed in Pleasant Hill.”
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