Raelene Austin, one of Lethbridge's first fully-trained Community Peace Officers. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

Lethbridge’s Community Peace Officers ready to go solo after completing training

Nov 14, 2019 | 2:47 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – The city’s police officers are being bolstered by the additions of nine new Community Peace Officers (CPO).

They have been in training for the last several months – first completing 22 weeks of in-house exercises and more recently being with a fully trained police officer for the next 16 weeks.

Raelene Austin is one of the nine CPOs that are now sole-officer ready and is the first one to have a shift on her own.

“It feels good, I’m excited, I’m eager. I’ve gone through a lot of training to be here so I’m excited to get out onto the street and start my job.”

Sgt. Mike Williamson had a hands-on role in training the CPOs and ensuring they can get to the level they need to be at.

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“We have nine good people that are going to make a huge difference in the community and, ultimately, they all want to become police officers at some point. [They are] very well-trained, very knowledgable, very good with the community, and I’m very excited to have them out here.”

Austin talked about her experience in the training program.

“I’ve gone to many of the calls that I would be attending as a solo officer such as the theft under [$5,000] and the businesses, warrants, mischief calls, stuff like that. I’ve also been exposed to some policing calls that my FTO had the full authority on but I had the chance to sit back and watch how he would work and how I would work as a police officer when that time comes.”

The CPOs will be working in partnership with The Watch and the regular police officers. CPOs receive the same training as police but are limited in the kinds of calls they can attend and what they can enforce.

Williamson says the CPOs can handle smaller matters while the full police officers deal with more significant crimes in the city.

He has previously spoken about how several officers have been feeling burnt out lately, but the CPOs will help to alleviate some of the stress they deal with on a daily basis.

Lethbridge is the first city in Alberta to have a Community Peace Officer program, so this is being looked at as a sort of pilot program.

Depending on how the original crop of CPOs do in their job, other communities might look to implement a similar program of their own.