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Nobody is in custody after a vehicle collided with and seriously hurt a Saskatoon Police Service officer on Circle Drive on Wednesday.
According to Saskatoon police chief Cam McBride, a member of the police’s traffic unit was “conducting speed enforcement in a construction zone in the southbound lanes of Circle Drive close to 108th Street” when they exited their vehicle and tried to flag a vehicle over to conduct a traffic stop and were hit by a passing vehicle.
McBride said police don’t know whether the officer’s vehicle’s emergency lights were on at the time of the collision and whether the vehicle that struck the officer was the vehicle he was trying to pull over. However, the officer was operating a fully-marked patrol car at the time, McBride said.
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The chief said the officer was seriously injured and taken to hospital.
“We don’t know the full extent of those injuries yet. However, last we heard, he is stable and is in ongoing treatment,” McBride told reporters.
The family of the officer has asked that his name not be shared at this time, McBride said, though he noted that could change in the future. The officer is a five-year member of the force, he said.
McBride said the police’s major crime unit, as well as the traffic analyst unit, is investigating, though he cautioned the public not to “read into” that fact.
“We just want to make sure that we collect and process as much and all the information as we can get our hands on,” McBride said, explaining that major crimes investigations are very detail-oriented and task-specific.
“I don’t have a timeline on how long that investigation will take, but I can assure members of the public and our own staff that that investigation will be thorough and complete, and will be fully reported once it’s ready to go,” McBride said.
The chief said that nobody is under arrest at this point and police are hoping to gather information in the form of video footage and witness accounts.
“There was nothing to indicate an immediate arrest or charges were necessary in the moment,” McBride said.
The chief said it’s very common for officers to be conducting traffic enforcement in areas of concern, like a construction zone. He said traffic stops, themselves, have a lot of inherent dangers for officers.
“When you consider police officer injuries and fatalities in North America, traffic stops are often involved in those,” McBride pointed out.
“I did that work for four and a half years, and so I’ve seen firsthand the inherent danger in doing that work.”
He said lots of steps have been taken by police in recent years to improve officer safety, including markings on police vehicles and high-visibility equipment.
McBride thanked everyone who helped the injured officer, from people who called the incident in to police to people who stopped on the road to assist, and police staff.
“It’s very hard and emotional to be thrust into a circumstance where you have to respond to an injury of one of your colleagues, and they did so with professionalism, and I can’t say enough how well our team responded yesterday, and how well they’ve cared for one another in the aftermath of this circumstance,” McBride said.
The chief said the incident is a reminder to people about the dangers in policing every day that officers face on the roads. The priority of the force, now, according to McBride, is the recovery and well-being of their injured member.
