SAINT JOHN, N.B. — One of the police force's goals for this year is a "holistic" approach to wellness to keep officers healthy and on the job, according to Chief Robert Bruce.
Saint John's police chief laid out the 2024 organizational priorities for the force Tuesday at a meeting of the Saint John Board of Police Commissioners. Of the five top-level priorities, one of the new entries includes "Fit for Duty," or a project to include a "holistic approach to health and wellness" in the force, Bruce said.
"We're finding that we have to not only be mentally fit, but physically fit, psychologically fit, resilient, prepared," he told the board, also mentioning succession planning, disability management and support for officers and their families. That includes monthly sessions and peer support, he said.
When asked how they'd measure the success of the initiative, Bruce said that could be measured through sick time, how many people were going on WorkSafe NB leave and how many were coming off it.
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"Is our organization helpful enough in our wellness piece that we're keeping people at work that are healthy and enjoy their job?" Bruce told reporters. "Our members face a lot of things that we wouldn't ask the general public to do, so we've got to support them."
The other of the five priorities include better operational readiness, effective communication, professional excellence and effective use of technology. The goals relate to the force's strategic plan and are derived from divisional meetings and advisory meetings throughout the year, an end-of-year debrief, and division-by-division priority-setting meetings, according to Bruce.
For operational readiness, Bruce said that has to do with finding efficiencies, something he said in February would be a focus of the force this year. Bruce said that involved putting officers where they're most needed.
"You have to look at, what kind of calls are we doing that we should or shouldn't," Bruce told reporters. "If our officer is going to something that we're going to be able to action, then they should be going. If they're not going to be able to action anything, why are they going?"
He noted that the family protection unit, which works on intimate partner violence and sex assault, has become more resource-intensive, with warrants and trauma-informed interviewing proving more difficult.
He said that the alternate response unit or online reporting are ways they've been able to handle situations without sending out uniformed officers.
That also applies to effective use of technology, where he said they're looking at ways to maximize officers being on the road rather than handling management tasks. With the force's new record management system, Bruce says they've planned to replace three sergeants with civilian staff so the sergeants can go "back on the road," which will happen "shortly" once the hiring wrapped up.
He said professional excellence and effective communications are "carry-overs" likely to show up every year, giving community sessions on fraud prevention and increased callbacks for those who report tips or incidents as examples of how to achieve that.
One of the divisional priorities listed for criminal investigations includes establishing two investigative teams, which Bruce said would draw from each of the major crime, family protection, and street crime units.
"Could we have two major investigation units with expertise in each of those areas and develop other, younger officers?" he said. "If we had two high-profile cases at one time, we could have two units that could just fly into action, everybody would be trained in those certain areas ... eventually those units would be more integrated rather than stand-alone like they are now."
There are 28 total divisional priorities, including staffing plans and internal communication as well as quality assurance on patrol.
