Cadets ‘successful,’ says police board chair
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The Brandon Community Cadet program has been “very successful” since being launched this summer, according to the chair of the Brandon Police Board.
Deb Arpin told Brandon City Council on Monday that positive feedback has been received from an open house held for the cadets as well as from downtown businesses who deal with the cadets.
The four cadets in the original complement were brought in with the goal of dealing with lower acuity issues in the community and freeing up sworn officers from tasks like accompanying detainees to the hospital and dealing with social issues.
Brandon Police Board chair Deb Arpin provides an update on the Brandon Community Cadets program during Monday's city council meeting. (Colin Slark/The Brandon Sun)
Arpin was joined by acting deputy chief Greg Hebert, who said the cadets’ greatest achievement was in helping resuscitate someone in medical distress in August.
He said that the cadets have been deployed more than 50 times and have been able to take on more than 130 hours of work that otherwise would have been done by sworn officers.
Marginalized people in downtown Brandon, Hebert said, go out of their way to greet cadets as they patrol downtown. A sizable part of their duties is to check on encampments of people experiencing homelessness as well as vacant buildings.
Two of the four current cadets are applying to become sworn officers.
Arpin said the police board’s desire is to expand the cadets program in this year’s municipal budget deliberations.
At previous council meetings, fellow police board member Coun. Shawn Berry (Ward 7) said the hope was to recruit more cadets next year so that the city would no longer have to pay for a third party to provide security services in downtown Brandon.
When the Western Manitoba Regional Library made a budget presentation earlier this month, Berry asked head of library services Erika Martin if she would be open to the idea of replacing the security guard posted at the downtown branch with a police cadet.
Martin said yes, providing there was always someone stationed at the library during operating hours.
» cslark@brandonsun.com
» X: @ColinSlark