Community Policing Unit making comfortable connections in Brooks

When the unit began its duties on May 31 last year, Sieben, Cpl. Josh Argue and Const. Sharon Peters made up the group. They’ve since been joined by Const. Travis Norton.

They attend farmers’ markets, rodeos and other community events like holiday parties, trying to make community members more comfortable with police being around.

“We take a lot of pride in the fact that we tend to be places that you don’t exactly expect to see police but we think that that’s one of the best ways that we can engage with people,” Sieben says. “Because when you only see officers and police and whatever you want to call it showing up when people might be in trouble, well that’s just re-enforcing the fact that people are on guard and kind of tense when police are around.”

She says they want people to be comfortable coming up and to say hello, “because if they don’t feel comfortable we can’t expect them to come and ask us for help.”

Sieben says one of the groups they have the most meaningful interactions with is new Canadians, which she says is “hands-down” her favourite group with which to interact.

She says some of them understandably come to the community with a distrust of police because of where they came from. So the Community Policing Unit tries to meet them where they’re at to earn their trust and build a relationship.

“For example with BCIS, our Brooks and County Immigration Society, we’ll book times and they’ll put a group together with people who are interested because they have regular clientele there and we’ll go,” she says.

“I have met them with officers at the firehall lots we show them the firetrucks and we show them the police cars. At first, they’re kind of like ‘alright I’ll listen to what you have to say sure.’ But by the end of it, we had people wearing the police vests and sitting in the car taking pictures and super comfortable asking about it. And that’s what we want.”

Members of the Brooks RCMP Community Policing Unit at a holiday gathering. (Photo Courtesy Kendra Sieben)

The unit also makes special efforts to connect with youth on social media, including a TikTok account that has more than 300,000 followers and reaches kids, parents and grandparents.

She says not everyone will go to the detachment with a question, and youth in particular prefer more indirect, casual means of communication.

Sieben even recalls one instance when an officer pulled over a student for speeding, as soon as the officer got to the window he was recognized from TikTok and the student asked to take a photo with him.

“It’s completely changed the way a lot of our youth see officers because we’re humanizing the officers but we’re also giving them that really comfortable, that comfortable method of communication with them,” she says.

Sieben says she thinks this type of community policing and outreach is the way that policing is going.

“I think that is the best way to really make a difference in your community and I think that gone are the days where it’s just the cold hand of enforcement. I think you have to build a relationship with the community, build that trust with the community in order for you to really see those results in terms of crime reduction and overall respect of authority.”

by Chris Brown

Community Policing Unit making comfortable connections in Brooks

Our Community