In my experience with the police service in Prince Albert, I've done a number of things. When I worked for the grand council I used to do the memorial walk; we honoured our brothers and sisters who were missing and murdered. Through that, I got to know the police service very well. We also do a rally in Prince Albert for a violence-free city, in which we honour our police services that we work with in Prince Albert.
I think we're in a really unique situation. For the first time now, I've been asked by one of the police officers to assist them on a domestic violence call. That's never happened, to my knowledge, and I'm really excited to see that they're working with community agencies in developing it.
I've also been in contact with Constable Matthew Gray, who's developing programs and wants to work with community organizations. Yes, you can honestly say that there have been some real problems with working with police services in the past, but I believe those bridges are now being mended and people are really trying hard to work with our first nations communities. I feel very respected when I work with them. I work with victim services and I work with a lot of those community agencies, so I'd like to speak to that.
As well, in some of the programs they're developing, they are trying to work with the missing and murdered women programs. I was invited to sit on a cold case file unit with them. I think the officer, Rhonda Meakin, has moved on since then. But always, the new person, the new officers, because officers get dispersed around the community quite a bit into various communities.... There's always somebody new that we need to work with and they always make that connection, so I really want to say that there's been a really good effort by the police service in Prince Albert to make that connection with community services. I think they're really trying hard to develop good programs.
We're working together at developing them. We're actually going to be setting up a committee that's going to address it and talk about it first-hand, and it's the police officers themselves who are setting that up and inviting people from the community to do this. I hope everyone participates in that when they do, because I think that's a preventative tool.