There’s not enough indigenous police officers working for the Regina Police Service according to their latest diversity report.
After five indigenous officers have retired since 2017, Regina Police have not been able to return to their diversity targets to represent Regina’s population accurately.
“We always talk about the need for us to be reflective of our community, that’s important,” said Chief of Police Evan Bray. “When the community looks at our police service, they have to see that they are represented here, and that goes for the Indigenous community and diversity in general.”
If RPS wants to create an accurate representation of Regina’s population in their workforce, they would require 10 to 11 per cent of their staff be First Nations.
In 2018, the police service reported around 8.3 per cent of staff to be indigenous, which is down slightly from 2017. However Bray said they’re giving the the issue more attention.
“We’ve done some work in the last year to really reinvigorate a focus on indigenous recruiting which requires a lot of attention.”
When comparing visible minorities as a whole, 2018 numbers were the same as 2017 at 8.2 per cent, still below the 11 percent target.
Regina Police hopes to also bring in more female police officers to the force, too. Right now RPS have under 25 per cent sworn-in female officers, but they hope to one day see those numbers go up to roughly 50 per cent female representation.
