NORTH BATTLEFORD — The Saskatchewan Marshals Service (SMS) came together with Red Pheasant Cree Nation (RPCN) to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at a ceremony on Red Pheasant Cree Nation’s urban reserve land at Eagles Landing in North Battleford.
The historic agreement is a sign of a shared commitment to collaboration in policing and community safety between the SMS and RPCN.
RPCN Chief Cody Benson and Chief Marshal Robert Cameron of the SMS signed the agreement on Oct. 20.
Benson said the MOU is a good step in the right direction for RPCN.
“It’s a good thing moving forward for us, as we’re all tackling the drugs, the gangs, all of that within our communities,” he said. “We need to find different avenues to address the issues and make sure that our people are able to go home at night and feel safe, and not be terrorized by gangs and the people that are bad into the drugs. We just need to figure out different avenues to address the problems in our communities.”
Benson said the SMS reached out to him and asked for a meeting.
“That was right when I was elected,” he said. “So we had a meeting here at Eagles Landing and we had a good working relationship right off the start. We had the same goals and objectives of cleaning up all of the communities. I kept working with them. That was a year and a half ago, and now we’re sitting here signing the MOU, so it didn’t happen overnight. There was a lot of work that got done to bring us here, and I’m very thankful for that.”
Cameron said that signing the MOU is a historic occasion.
“This is a historic day for the Saskatchewan Marshals and for Red Pheasant Cree Nation,” he said. “This MOU is certainly going to open up the communication and the ability for us to work together in partnership and be able to tackle some of the crime that the Chief [Benson] had spoken about before.”
“Certainly, we’ll do our part in collaboration with the RCMP and the Nation itself and all the area, and really work on dealing with that high-risk, high-impact crime,” Cameron added. “Red Pheasant is the first community that we are partnering with right now. There’ll be others in the future. We’ll be speaking to other chiefs from different communities and First Nations as we go forward.”
People can expect to start seeing the SMS in the community and surrounding area around December.
Battlefords MLA Jeremy Cockrill said the SMS has its headquarters in Prince Albert, so the Battlefords will be the second regional centre for the Marshals. The Battlefords marshals office will have about 15 staff members.
“The investments that the province is making in the marshals and expanding the service is really for the whole region,” he said.
“What we’re announcing here today is really important because it speaks to the close relationship with the Saskatchewan Marshals Service, I think all of our policing services aim to have with the Indigenous communities in our province,” Cockrill added.
