New Regina police plane has ‘provided positive results:’ Bray

The Regina Police Service’s use of its new plane has taken off.

Chief Evan Bray told Gormley on Wednesday the plane is one of the most positive things in the police service’s recent history, adding it has helped the RPS save time and resources as well as cut down on the use of force.

“In Saskatoon, (there’s been) a plane that the police service has utilized for the better part of a decade, so people (there) know the benefits of that,” he said.

Bray says when the RPS initially proposed the idea and secured funding to pay for the plane, there was criticism by a loud minority.

“Every night that plane is up in the sky, it has provided positive results for the citizens of our city,” he said. “(Let’s say we have) someone saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got an alarm in my house and I can see someone’s breaking into my house on the phone.’ Within 10 seconds, we have a visual on the suspect and about a minute after that, the person is under arrest with no use of force.”

The plane features FLIR technology, which detects heat and heat sources, Bray says.

“When you have a person who’s, in the dark of night, running through alleys and/or in backyards away from police, (the plane makes it) very easy to visually keep your eye on that person,” the police chief added.

It could be easily used to follow someone who has dumped a stolen car and kept on running, Bray noted.

“(The plane) cannot see inside buildings. It cannot even see inside vehicles. This isn’t James Bond,” he added.

When someone goes missing, like an elderly person from a group home or a young child, the plane could help police find them more quickly, Bray says.

As for crime in Regina in general, the police chief says the city is returning to 2019 crime levels, based on crime statistics for last year.

“We saw crimes against the person on the decline slightly. I think we were down four (or) 4 1/2 per cent,” Bray added. “Crime against property — so that’s theft from vehicles, theft of vehicles, those types of things — increased by about 10 per cent.”

The police chief said there’s a strong relation between street drugs and property crime.

“If the person doing the crime isn’t using it for that purpose, they’re using it for money at some point,” he added.

Even though Bray acknowledged that root causes of crime are an issue that needs to be address, he says there are always going to be people who just behave badly.

“We need to make sure there’s consequences for people behaving badly because there certainly are consequences to the rest of society,” he said.

The police chief says although he believes there’s a place for mediation and alternative measures to prevent people from getting into the justice stream and into the system, sometimes there’s a need for the system to play its role.