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Peacekeepers trained for Little Pine

  • Angela Hill | November 19, 2018

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Classes began for 20 students from Little Pine and Poundmaker First Nations on October 9th to mark something bigger for their communities as they work towards local, Indigenous policing. The 20 recruits spent seven weeks training at Little Pine First Nation in the community safety officer induction program.

“We’ve been working on this for the past three years,” said Little Pine Councilor Richard Checkosis, who holds the reserve’s justice portfolio. “There are a lot of barriers that we have had to overcome trying to get this program started.”

The first component of the training is an introduction to Cree culture.

“They need to understand stuff before they go on duty,” Checkosis said.

When the students complete the program, they will qualify for special constable appointments, said Elder Jacob Pete, the program facilitator and technical consultation.

“As far as I am concerned they are peacekeepers, that’s what they will be called peacekeepers, not security guards, not special constables, but peacekeepers within our community,” said Pete, a retired RCMP officer.

Once those students receive further screening from the province, and are designated special constables, they will be entitled to additional training in the future, said Pete. Eventually they will be able to stop traffic and they’ll actually be able deal with summary conviction offenses, he said.

“To put this thing together is a lot of community effort. We’ve been having community meetings here for the last three years,” Pete said.

It all comes in response to concerns from community members around safety on reserve. According to documents shared by Pete from a meeting with RCMP in January, one of the biggest concerns is with police response times – how long it takes an officer to respond after someone in the community calls 911. In other cases, community members reported negative experiences with the calls, which has led to many people no longer calling for help.

The community wanted to work with RCMP to have greater security on reserve. Little Pine started security patrols in February this year. Currently they patrol only at night, but Checkosis said they want to expand it to being a 24-hours-a-day program. He adds that along with the special constables being trained in the program they will need a building, dispatchers, a police chief and funding to make it all work.

The idea is a local number to call police will address the long wait time.

“With this system, what we’ve got is a local number and our people can be there within minutes,” Pete said. “This is a step in the right direction to start this community safety program.”

While 20 participates are expected to graduate the community safety officer induction program, Little Pine is only looking to hire eight. The others will go on to work at Poundmaker, or any community looking for public safety officers, Pete said.

“When they get appointed it makes a safer reserve for those communities,” Checkosis said. “It will be a win-win for all of our applicants.”

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