Last year, the Prince Albert Police Service (PAPS) made nearly 6,000 arrests; about half of them were for intoxication and the numbers are on track to be similar this year.
To ensure the safety of those detained, PAPS, Parkland Ambulance Care and the Saskatchewan Health Authority, through a roster of addiction medicine on-call physicians, have partnered to offer health-care intervention to detained individuals experiencing addiction – particularly those requiring support to stabilize and detoxify.
“We have a supervisor that previously had to determine when it was appropriate to call for medical support and now with a paramedic, who has a much higher level of training as it relates to health and has the equipment to properly assess and triage somebody, we will be able to assess properly when someone needs to go to the hospital and when someone needs to be monitored here in the detention centre,” said PAPS Chief Jonathan Bergen.
PRINCE ALBERT A partnership between Prince Albert police, Parkland Ambulance and the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) is offering addictions treatment to people incarcerated in police cells. A senior police officer and paramedic will oversee the cells between 7:30 p.m. and 7:30 a.m. daily. According to an SHA news release, this will allow patients to be assessed, treated and taken to hospital in a timely manner, if needed. Police Chief Jon Bergen said he hopes the project will help to lower the city’s overall crime rate. People that do suffer from different addictions will be desperate to fuel their addiction, and that could lead to theft and other things, so we do tie it to crime. We observe that. We know that to be real,” he said.
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