The purpose of the Morden Police Service Board (MPSB) is to provide civilian governance respecting the Morden Police Service (MPS) to ensure the enforcement of law, the maintenance of public peace, and prevention of crime stated MPS Board Chair Lee Bassett.
She added, according to the Police Services Act, police boards are to work collaboratively with the police chief and to establish the community's priorities and objectives for the police service, through strategic planning.
Bassett reported the direction for the next four years.
"We established 4 priorities and objectives. The first one is to keep our streets safe through education and enforcement, second, promote community policing and partnerships, third, enforce drug laws, and fourth to sustain our workforce."
She said it took an extensive review of what is happening in the community and where they want to go.
"We engaged our community stakeholders, the police inspector and sergeants, the community resource officer, the youth member of city council and we closely reviewed the responses from our survey last year, of which we had 478 respondents. Without them, it would have been very, very difficult to identify the services, priorities and objectives. So, thank you everyone who participated."
Along with setting a course, metrics and measurements have been put in place to monitor the success of the plan as it unfolds.
"We've established some objectives or things that we need to do under each priority. For example, keeping our streets safe will involve promoting road safety and driver responsibility. Enforcing laws means that we will work collaboratively with other law enforcement agencies on joint projects. They're all listed in the strategic plan for anyone who's interested."
Measurements also include tracking the number of times the K-9 unit is deployed, how many joint force operations are conducted, and receiving meaningful feedback from the community resource officer.
Chief Brad Neduzak is grateful for the community input to establish these priorities.
"I think it's very important when we are working through a strategic plan with the police service that we do involve the community like we have through our community survey and through our community consultation groups. We, as police, have been doing our jobs for many, many years with myself here for almost 40 years and my executive team for 20 plus years. Although we know what we're doing in our job, sometimes you can miss things, and it's important to have that input from our community."
When asked if there was feedback that was unexpected or new, Chief Neduzak replied,
"No big surprises. Things such as community involvement and partnerships, drug enforcement, that's huge in any community I think nowadays, and also a mental health component. No big surprises, but it certainly reinforces that we are on the right path and that we can change some things to improve."
Bassett noted it's important for the public to know the amount of training officers receive to do their job well and welcomes all public feedback to help them do their jobs better.