THUNDER BAY — Nishnawbe Aski Police Service’s top cop says the force is poised to expand “exponentially over the next five to 10 years” thanks to provincial funding.
NAPS is on track to add 80 new uniformed officers to its current 260 this year, Chief Terry Armstrong told Newswatch this week.
The 80 new officers would swell the NAPS rolls to about 320 once you subtract 20 or so leaving the service in the course of the year, he said.
NAPS is projected to eventually have about 520 officers plus more than 100 civilian employees, he said.
Armstrong was the NAPS chief from 2013 to 2018 and then returned from retirement last March after Roland Morrison was suspended as police chief. The NAPS board terminated Morrison on Nov. 1.
Headquartered in Thunder Bay, NAPS serves 34 First Nations communities across northern Ontario and is the largest First Nations police service in Canada.
Its communities span west to east from Poplar Hill to Apitipi Anicinapek Nation, north to south from Fort Severn to Chapleau Cree First Nation.
The police force officially became “constituted” under the province’s Community Safety and Policing Act in a signing ceremony last month in Toronto.
Being under the provincial statute means NAPS “will benefit from the same standards as municipal police services in Ontario and receive the proper funding that is required to meet those standards,” said a news release from Nishnawbe Aski Nation.
Frank McKay, acting chair of the NAPS board, said the new relationship with the province “will allow us to provide essential services to our communities in a culturally appropriate way that respects our people, our laws and our ways of life.”
A news release from the province announced a “$514 million investment” to help the police service grow to 500-plus officers “over the next several years.”
That money is already coming in, Armstrong said this week.
The funding will also help with upgrading other than personnel recruitment and training, he said.
“We’re getting more infrastructure, some new detachments, some new headquarters. This headquarters here is new,” he said, speaking to Dougall Media reporters in the south-side Thunder Bay headquarters NAPS moved into last year.
“We're also looking at new headquarters in Sioux Lookout and also in the northeast region,” he added.
Armstrong said doubling the officer rolls will mean a great improvement in public safety in NAPS’s 34 communities – “and that's what this is really all about.
“It's about the safety of the communities, the people we serve.
“And as we all know, (NAPS has been) drastically underfunded for many, many years. And now we can build towards safer communities for the First Nations people of northwestern and northeastern Ontario.”
