Const. Derek Chesney has stepped down from his role as Saskatoon Police Service‘s Indigenous relations officer, and will now be on foot patrol in Saskatoon.
Chesney spent five years in the position and his role quickly grew to connect with many groups in the city, including the LGBTQ+ community and newcomers to Canada.
“When I started working in our cultural relations unit, I thought it was going to be the police’s role to go out and educate the community,” Chesney said on Thursday.
“What I realized is that the community educated us.”
The biggest change Chesney noticed during his time as the Indigenous relations officer was the increased efforts around reconciliation. He said people are becoming more educated about what happened, which is a step in the right direction.
Chesney spent four years walking the beat downtown before taking on his role with the cultural relations unit. Going back on foot patrol after what he learned over the past five years feels like a full-circle moment for him.
“When you look at Indigenous teachings, everything is in a circle and everything does come around. When you realize that you have come around that circle a couple of times, you start seeing the changes,” Chesney said.
“Even though they might be minute, when you look over it in a span of time, you see that big things have happened.”