RM of Hanover hires CSO

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This article was published 30/01/2024 (537 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The RM of Hanover has hired a community safety officer (CSO) to handle bylaw enforcement and other duties in the region.

“We do have a bylaw officer and when we’re challenged with no parking signs in communities and the signs are up but we could never really enforce them because we had no muscle behind (it) and that is where the discussion started (on having a CSO),” said Reeve Jim Funk. “Policing is busy and this was something that wasn’t very high on their priority list. This has been talked about a little bit with the pervious reeve and never went anywhere because…the province has to allow it.”

As the initiative is in the early stages, Funk said the CSO will start with parking and then move on to traffic on municipal roadways. The CSO will not replace the RCMP rather it will allow police to focus on criminal matters and provincial roadways.

Funk said this isn’t intended to establish another revenue stream for the RM.

The current CSO is Trevor Schellenberg who is a bylaw enforcement officer with the RM. He has been doing bylaw enforcement for 15 years with the City of Steinbach and was a CSO with the city for one year before he began bylaw enforcement with the RM in October. He’s also an appointed inspector through the province for motor carrier enforcement, which deals with truck traffic as well as weight restrictions.

“Our authority has been mostly the Highway Traffic Act. We get to deal with some of the intoxicated persons (who might be on the roadways) we don’t deal with any criminal matters, but we can assist RCMP with calls that they may have doing traffic or scene protection, but we don’t get involved with any criminal code matters,” said Schellenberg.

Matters that Schellenberg will be dealing with include vehicle registration, the authority to stop vehicles and request documentation, traffic, enforce compliance with traffic control devices and failing to comply, signals, parking, pedestrians, failure to wear a helmet, seatbelts, using portable devices, smoking inside a vehicle with children present, careless driving, and detaining intoxicated persons until they can be transferred to the RCMP.

The only weapons the CSO officer has are handcuffs, a spray device, and a baton.

“He’s already doing patrols with our (bylaw vehicle); the CSO vehicle will be ready in spring. Two to two-and-a-half months. Should be right in time for our spring road restrictions,” said manager of protective services Paul Wiebe.

The CSO program is budgeted to cost the RM just under $94,000 for operations. Equipment purchases under the capital plan will be north of $190,000 including a new vehicle and all of the necessary equipment. Some of that equipment for the vehicle will be lights on the roof and a licence plate reader that accesses MPI’s data base.

“I would think that the crux of it is that communities across the province are complaining about crime and a lack of resources and this is an opportunity for them as a community to do something about it. It’s an opportunity to put more officers out there whether they’re community safety officers or regular officers there’s still an effect on crime,” said Ste Anne Police Chief Marc Robichaud.

Ste Anne has had CSOs for three years now. It has a full-time CSO and a part-time CSO.

“It allows (regular members) to concentrate on some of their other work and it allows us to maintain the kind of enforcement that we want as far as traffic enforcement and visibility in the community so it helps with that,” said Robichaud.

“There are times when the courts and criminal investigations have become so complex the amount of work that goes into them is so great that a lot of times people are tied up doing paperwork. We have mountains of paperwork to do and any arrests that we make, this helps us and allows us to be still visible.”