Springfield police shutters after all officers join RCMP

The Springfield Police Service has shut down its office after its acting chief and only constable resigned to join the RCMP.

The RM of Springfield said in a Aug. 6 Facebook post the police office will be closed until further notice, but emergency services are still available in the area.

“They (the officers) gave us a notice, and we’re happy to see them progressing that way. But unfortunately that left us with nobody,” said Colleen Draper, CAO of the RM of Springfield.

She said Springfield police is often viewed as a stepping stone for people to join the RCMP or larger services, and its not surprising when people leave. But it’s difficult to compete with the RCMP’s wages and benefits because the RM can’t afford to match what’s offered, Draper said.

The recent resignations come after the previous chief quit last July along with another constable who left in November, Draper said. They also joined the RCMP.

The RM put ads out to hire a new chief and one constable, but it was difficult to find qualified candidates, so the ads were pulled, she said.

“If a successful candidate comes forward, then we can obviously go through that process and reopen,” Draper told The Carillon. “But for now, council is just taking a step back and looking at what the community needs and if we need to do any changes.”

The constable wages advertised in the posting ranged from $72,904 to $88,708 annually, according to Draper.

The two officers joined RCMP under its experienced police officer program, which offers competitive salaries when recruiting officers from other departments, a RCMP spokesperson said in a email statement.

The Oakbank detachment has 18 members, and the amount of personnel hasn’t changed. The spokesperson didn’t say where the two officers would be posted.

Springfield Mayor Patrick Therrien doesn’t expect to see a change in law enforcement despite having less officers because the Oakbank RCMP is still the primary agency in the RM. He said the Springfield police was redundant since it had a secondment agreement with the RCMP detachment to share resources and respond to the same calls.

“We can’t have two police services in the RM of Springfield. It has to be one and that’s the RCMP,” Therrien, a former RCMP officer, said.

There are no plans to disband the municipal police yet, he said, but he expects to review the service with the rest of council to assess different options.

One of those options is using the funds and resources dedicated for the police to hire bylaw enforcement or community safety officers to fill the gap, Therrien said.

Frank Cormier, a University of Manitoba criminology professor, said Springfield police’s recent closure is part of a larger trend where small municipalities are relying on the RCMP more.

“With scarce resources, with costs rising for everything and governments running deficits, the local police force is more and more becoming a thing of the past,” he said.

He said recruitment and retention has been an issue for nearly all police services, both big and small. When larger departments try filling personnel gaps by attracting officers from smaller services, it can create a bidding war, Cormier said.

“When everybody’s short, its just going to turn into a real mess and a very expensive one,” he said.

The RM dedicated $632,140 for its police service, a 5.5 percent decrease compared to its 2024 spending, according to its 2025 Financial Plan.

It doesn’t receive any specific funding for municipal policing from the provincial or federal governments, but gets a provincial grant of $1.8 million for municipal operations, according to its 2025 Financial Plan. It also receives $5.5 million in other federal and provincial transfers. The province pays for the RCMP detachment in the RM, Draper said.

While the province dedicated $58.5 million for municipal policing under the Urban Policing Grant in its 2025 budget, Springfield police doesn’t qualify for that funding because it’s classified as self-funded and isn’t required to have its own service, according to Manitoba’s Police Services Act, a provincial spokesperson said.

Manitoba Justice Minister Matt Wiebe said the province is working to ensure there’s no disruption of service in the absence of the Springfield police, including increasing the number of RCMP officers in the area. The province will help the RM create plan on the future of the service, he said.

“Every community has different needs or different priorities, and so it really is about listening to what those are,” he said.