INNISFAIL - The town wants a local youth to be a voting member on the soon to be up and running Innisfail Policing Committee, with a mission to bring the voices of the community's young to the table on safety needs and priorities for the community.
The town's initiative to have the young represented is being applauded by both the Innisfail RCMP and Chinook's Edge School Division.
"As a school division we have always been very supportive of the notion of school resource officers building positive relationships between schools and our community and policing at a young age. We love to see that and so this to me is an extension of it," said Kurt Sacher, Chinook's Edge superintendent of schools. "If there is interest and it works we certainly support that 100 per cent. I am quite confident we've got students who will be very helpful to that particular endeavour."
The approval by Chinook's Edge and the local RCMP comes at a time when the public profile of local youth has increased due to the current construction of the million-dollar skatepark, located just south of the Innisfail School's Campus, a project long sought by the youth of the community.
"The youth have been asking for a skatepark for a long time. It tells the youth that the town is listening and wants to address their concerns and give credence to their voice, and having their voice being impactful and having meaning," said Innisfail RCMP Const. Craig Nelson, the detachment's school resource officer.
"The youth are a huge part of the community," added Nelson. "Their voices often times are not heard, so it is important they are heard. It is a priority with the RCMP to listen to the voices of our youth and hear their concerns so we can help them address them."
The policing committee was formally approved by council at its July 22 regular meeting, and is expected to be operational by the end of October.
The committee will be comprised of seven voting members, two from town council and five from the public, including one youth. All voting members are volunteers and won't be receiving honorariums. There will also be two non-voting members - one from the Innisfail RCMP and the other from the Town of Innisfail.
In the meantime, the town is now in the process of receiving public applications from citizens wanting to be one of the five public members. Those applications will be received until Sept. 18.
Todd Becker, the town's CAO, said a report on the successful public applicants will then go to council "likely" on Sept. 23, with a "hope" that one successful application will be a local youth.
"We are hoping that is the case. We will be getting in the schools in about a week or so. We will be sending correspondence to the schools that we are seeking youth between the ages of 16 and 18. There might be someone there who has a keen interest," said Becker. "We will probably go right to the school, right to their administration to help us filter out some information."
Once the five public applicants have been approved they and the two council members will be tasked to undergo training through an orientation program established for the committee.
Innisfail is now one of eight municipalities in the province that have either police or safe communities committees, all of them structured through municipal bylaws, which are in turn guided and developed through the Alberta Police Act.
Under guidelines set by Alberta Justice and Solicitor General, each policing committee that involves the RCMP must oversee the administration of the Police Service Agreement, assist in selecting the officer in charge for the police service, communicate the council’s interest to the officer in charge, develop a yearly plan outlining policing priorities and strategies, consult with the officer in charge of its implementation, communicate the public’s interests and concerns to the officer in charge, help the officer in charge resolve public complaints and appoint a public complaint director to receive complaints against police.
RCMP policing committees do not oversee the daily operations of police services. That is done by the RCMP detachment commander.
