Chief of Police with the Weyburn Police Service (WPS), Jamie Blunden, said that 2022 was a very good year for their service, based on the crime statistics. 

"You know, when we look back on the year 2022, I mean when we look at the crime stats and where we're at year-to-date, I think overall when we compare it to the last eight years, every single offense type that we have involved with the police service is lower than that eight-year average. So, you know our crimes against person, crimes against property, any Criminal Code traffic violations, as well as Criminal Code violations. Every one of them is below that eight-year average."

Chief Blunden touched upon the addition of a new highly trained member of WPS this year: a Belgian Malinois.

"The K9 unit, obviously, with Oakley coming in with Constable McSherry, and they're fully trained up now as a drug unit dog, and so we're pretty proud and happy to see them on the street doing the work that they do in our CTSS [Combined Traffic Services Saskatchewan] unit, as well as assisting our drug unit with respect to drug work." 

He said that they implemented four new corporal positions last year, and this year they had all of their supervisory roles between the corporals, sergeants, deputy chiefs and office managers, all trained up in leadership. 

"They've all taken that same sort of leadership training, so we're on the same page, so again, that was a pretty successful training project for us and we're seeing some of the results of that in our everyday work here."

The Weyburn and Estevan Police Services also joined forces in 2020 to create the Joint Tactical Support Team, which flourished in 2022.

Chief Blunden said that the team now has five members from Weyburn and five members from Estevan, and, "...we have coverage for any critical incident that happens, both here as well as in Estevan...that's one of the feathers that we have in our cap."

Chief Blunden also mentioned the introduction of new firearms for WPS this year.

"The last thing that we did that was sort of over the year, was that we've done the transition from our firearms that we have. We've gone from having a .40-calibre pistol to a nine millimetre Glock, and so everybody’s transitioned over to that new pistol itself."

He said that there have been a lot of changes over the last year for WPS, they have been really busy, and he's proud of the membership and staff in regards to what they do for the community.

"We were able to make sure that the community itself was safe and the crime stats were lower than the eight year average that we had."