New Niverville RCMP detachment opens to public

Niverville will have its own dedicated RCMP officers, after the new municipal detachment opened its doors on Monday.

The detachment, located at 329A Bronstone Drive, will be staffed by three constables and one corporal from the RCMP’s St-Pierre-Jolys detachment and administrative assistant.

Niverville Mayor Myron Dyck applauded the new detachment and is excited to see more emergency services in the community.

“As a community grows, you have to continue to build upon what you have, whether it’s water or wastewater or emergency services. So to be able to have something like this in our community just gives us a greater presence and obviously greater service,” Dyck told reporters. “We’ve taken what’s good and now we’re moving on to something even better.”

Niverville’s population in 2021 was 5,947 people, according to Statistics Canada’s census.

Approval for the new detachment was granted on April 1, 2023, with Niverville signing a $733,256 per year contract with the RCMP. Construction also began that year and finished this summer.

The Carillon previously reported the construction cost for the new detachment was $1.1 million.

The office will have no jail cells and one “soft room,” equipped with soft chairs and recording devices for interviewing people.

Staff Sgt. Ron Poirier, who works out of the St-Pierre-Jolys detachment, said having officers based in Niverville won’t affect service delivery or response times for his detachment.

“The numbers haven’t changed. It’s just where they’re responding from,” he said. Officers at the new detachment will still ultimately report to Poirier.

The town’s detachment is unique to Manitoba, due to it being a shared space with the municipal administrative building, he said.

Dyck said conversations began on a potential RCMP detachment before he became mayor in 2014. In 2018, Dyck said Niverville conducted a police study to determine if it was more economical to have an RCMP detachment or its own local police department. That study was spurred by two violent criminal incidents that made safety an important topic for residents, he said. Dyck didn’t give any details on those incidents.

Prior to the new detachment, he said officials encouraged officers stationed at the St-Pierre-Jolys detachment to live in Niverville to add an extra level of presence to the community.

“We could see them coming and going to work, which did help. It was usually maybe half (of the officers), give or take, that would live here, versus St Pierre,” Dyck told reporters.

The office will be open from Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and will offer criminal record checks, special licenses and general inquiries.

The detachment can be contacted at 204-388-7060 for general inquiries and at 204-388-9330 for non-emergency police reports.