THUNDER BAY – Thursday’s badge ceremony for 11 new Nishnawbe Aski Police Service members brings the First Nations force up to about 200 members, NAPS Chief of Police Roland Morrison said.
That’s dozens shy of the 262 that the service considers a “normal complement,” he said, but “we are slowly getting up there.”
Dogged recruitment efforts inside and outside Ontario will continue to close the gap, he said.
“Certainly our recruitment department has been very, very busy going out into the field, attending those [police] colleges, going to career fairs,” he said.
NAPS serves 34 First Nations in a vast expanse stretching as far north as Hudson Bay, east to a First Nation near Ontario’s border with Quebec, and west to Deer Lake and Poplar Hill near Manitoba.
NAPS representatives are “getting the word out about our service and going out to not only [places] in Ontario but also in Manitoba and Saskatchewan,” Morrison said. “We’re going out of province to recruit people.”
One selling point is the NAPS officer scheduling of alternating two weeks on and two weeks off, because “it allows a work-life balance” and family time, he said.
“And that is something that no other police services can truly offer other than Nishnawbe Aski police. So we do see that as attractive to people who want to come and police in the Nishnawbe Aski Nation [communities].”
Recruiting qualified officers is “challenging” in the police sector generally, but more challenging in northern Indigenous policing “because of the trauma that’s in our communities,” he said.
Recruitment of more Indigenous officers is a goal for NAPS “in order for us to really tackle those issues,” he said.
All 11 new officers are quality recruits, he said.
The badge ceremony that took place Thursday at a Thunder Bay hotel also included four new constables for the Lac Seul Police Service, bringing that police service’s officer number up to 17.
