Chief researched Nick Jones speaks on Thursday. Photo courtesy RPS, Twitter
The Regina Police Service scores well when it comes to public trust, accountability and quality of service, but needs to work on improving its trust and confidence in the aboriginal community.
The numbers are contained in an in-depth survey conducted by researchers at the University of Regina.
The surveys have been done every two years since 2011 and every year the police is doing better.
In the latest survey, almost 81 per cent of respondents ranked the quality of service as good to excellent, 80 per cent were very or highly satisfied with the level of service and 77 per cent felt the police service is sensitive to the needs of ethnic groups.
Chief researcher Nick Jones says he was quite surprised at the high level of satisfaction.
“Those are really exceptionally high results,” he says. “And to maintain that type of consistency given the period of time of we are talking about I think that is very difficult to do.”
Regina police chief Troy Hagen says the aim of the survey is to find areas that need improvement. One of them is building a higher level of trust and confidence with the aboriginal community.
“But that is just one area where we look to make improvements and once again focus on improving our results,” he says. “One thing I am particularly satisfied with is that we have shown continuous growth.”
Regina mayor Michael Fougere says the trend shows improvements in all five indicators of trust and confidence since the surveys began in 2011. He expects that trend will continue.
“In fact compared to the rest of Canada we are doing very, very well. Can we do better? Yes we certainly can,” he says.
The random phone survey took place in September involving both land lines and cell phones. More than 450 people participated.