BARRHEAD - The Barrhead RCMP may look to the provincial reservist program to help resolve some of its short-term staffing issues, detachment commander Sgt. Colin Hack told Town of Barrhead councillors during their June 10 meeting.
He said that come September, the detachment would be four members down.
A full complement for the Barrhead RCMP Detachment is one sergeant, one corporal, seven general duty constables and a student resource officer.
Hack was at the council to present the RCMP's first-quarter crime statistics for January to March, which showed crime statistics to be on a downward trend for the same period over the last five years.
Later in the meeting, in response to Coun. Don Smith's question about what the municipality was getting for the money it paid the province for policing, Hack said, was that the public would not notice the shortfall, as any shortage in shifts would be filled through overtime from members within and outside the detachment.
However, to avoid the potential of overworking members, Hack said he has applied for relief members from the RCMP's Reserve Program.
The program hires retired or former police officers to fill temporary vacancies within the RCMP. The program offers reservists the opportunity to continue utilizing their skills and knowledge to serve their community.
"The program is pretty robust in Alberta," he said, adding detachments in Northern Canada often take advantage of the program.
Hack said the Barrhead detachment is not the only one in the region currently experiencing staffing issues and said that other detachments in Alberta are facing similar, if not worse, staffing shortages.
Hack said although the RCMP has seen an uptick in recruitment numbers, the prairie provinces, especially, are having difficulties attracting new members.
As part of the recruitment process at the RCMP Depot, recruits can select their preferred province (although they are not guaranteed) for their first posting.
"Out of 20 or 30 recruits, maybe one is picking Alberta. Generally, they want an island or a province beside it, so Vancouver Island and the east coast are getting recruits, but Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, aren't getting as many," he said.
In 2020, the province attempted to allocate more resources to rural communities by modifying its police funding model. Essentially, counties and rural communities under 5,000 have to contribute towards policing costs.
Hack said that as a result of the extra funding, 279 police officers and 242 civilian support positions will be created in Alberta by the end of 2026.
"We are doing our best to fill these positions," he said.
Hack said the extra resources have allowed "K" Division to create specialized units. One of the more useful, in his opinion, is an updated Operational Operations Centre (OCC) and supported by Real Time Operations Centre (RTOC).
"The [RTOC] takes every high-risk call through the OCC, and they can dispatch whatever specialized resources we need and send them to us," he said.
Hack also touched on the Regional Police and Crisis Teams (RPACT), which the RCMP created in partnership with Alberta Health Services (AHS).
The two-person RPACT team consists of an RCMP member and a mental health nurse or therapist.
"A lot of the calls we go out to in Barrhead are mental health calls that necessarily don't require police intervention because they are not criminals," Hack said.
Unfortunately, he said the nearest RPACT team is Athabasca.
Similar to the police reservists, Hack said, the RCMP is looking to form relief teams that could be deployed to detachments experiencing short-term, urgent staffing issues.
Regrettably, Hack said he understands the RCMP is having a problem staffing the units.
When everything is totalled, the RCMP will have added 136 regular members in Alberta by the end of next year.
"It is fine to say that on paper, but you have to fill these spots. We'll see what happens," he said.
Barry Kerton, TownandCountryToday.com
