Rick Bourassa to remain as Moose Jaw’s police chief until at least 2026

The City of Moose Jaw will be keeping its police chief until at least the end of 2026.

Police Chief Rick Bourassa told the Greg Morgan Morning Show on Tuesday the decision to extend his contract wasn’t an easy one.

“A lot of thought went into it and, of course, discussions with the board of police commissioners and just looking toward the future and how we wanted to proceed,” Bourassa said. “With all of that … we decided it was the time to continue my tenure here.”

When it comes to building public trust, the police chief says one of the most important things is presence.

“(Police officers must be) present in the community and present at events,” Bourassa added. “(That includes) doing the things that people expect a police chief and police service to do and doing those in a principled way.”

He believes policing is really about understanding the priorities of the community and working to address them while being accessible and available.

Like in many other jurisdictions across the province and even the country, the police chief says he’s been noticing an increased lack of civility which indicated an increase in the severity of crime.

“We’ve been working pretty in depth on that,” he said. “We’ve increased our investigative capability to address serious crime and we’ve also increased our tactical capability to move quickly when we need to.”

Bourassa added the Moose Jaw Police Service is working with its partners to address the factors that might be driving up the severity of crimes.

Going through the restrictions from the pandemic really changed a lot of social dynamics for everyone, he said.

“We feel that and see that in the police world. We lost some of that human connection that is so important for us over those years and what we saw was an increase in stressors in communities across the country,” Bourassa said. “As police services, we responded to a lot of those situations and worked to resolve them as best we could.”

Bourassa started his policing career with the Regina Police Service in 1981.