Police inclusion, diversity recruitment camp applications top 100 mark

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Response to a Saint John Police initiative to add more females and people who are under-represented to the force have surpassed Chief Robert Bruce’s expectations.

The Saint John Police Inclusion and Diversity Recruitment Camp aims to provide an opportunity for “females and under-represented community members” to explore a career in policing, Bruce explained during this week’s meeting of the Saint John Board of Police Commissioners. Registration for the camp closes this week and, so far, Bruce told the board, there have been 110 applicants, forcing the department to add a second day to the camp with the potential for a third.

“We’re really excited about the opportunity to bring people into our community and to give them an idea of what policing is all about with Saint John Police and what it takes to make a difference here,” Bruce said. “We knew we were generating quite a bit of interest from people. We had an open house two months ago and we had over 80 people from the community stop in, so we did think we were going to attract people that would be interested.”

The camps tie in with other outreach efforts the force has been making to add more diversity to staff, both for officers and civilian employees, the chief noted.

He added that the force has been seeing success in those efforts, unlike for other police forces across the country where “recruiting is at an all-time low and they’re not getting people, we’re not having that problem.”

Board chair Tamara Kelly asked how many individuals each camp is expected to accommodate. Bruce said the goal is to have 30 applicants at each camp but that number could go as high as 35 though, at that figure, “it’s just too many in a tract and they’ll just miss the experience.”

“It’s great to see that many people apply for it,” Kelly said, noting the camp should offer people the opportunity to see whether policing is a career they would be interested in.

Bruce said the force has already had some success in adding diversity to its staff and praised the calibre of applicants the department has seen. He noted Deputy Chief Honey Dwyer has been part of that hiring process and said whittling applicants down to a shortlist of potential hires has become challenging due to their quality.

“If that’s your worst problem, is deciding who…,” Dwyer said. “I’m impressed. When you have to weed out because you have so many it’s good.”

Bruce told media after the meeting the aim of the upcoming camps – scheduled for May 23 and August 22 with the third, if needed, expected to be held in June – is to give successful applicants the opportunity “to experience what policing can offer, what it can do and what you can offer to your community and what you can offer to policing.”

The camps will run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and cover a wide variety of topics regarding police officers ranging from the recruitment process to answering calls for service. Those interested in applying to attend the camp must be at least 19 years of age, must be an underrepresented community member and cannot have previously been selected for Saint John Police Sponsorship Program. Applications can be found on the Saint John Police website.