Regina Police Service gets 2022 budget approved, plans to buy plane

After a vote of 7-4, the Regina Police Service (RPS) had its 2022 budget approved by city council Wednesday night — giving the RPS the green light to buy a plane and develop the Aerial Support Unit.

The capital cost of the plane will be $1.2 million, according to RPS Chief Evan Bray, while more money will be used to make sure the aircraft is equipped to meet the police service’s needs.

“A small amount of that is for the plane. A large amount of that is for the instrumentation and the tools that go in the plane. The thermal imaging camera, the software, all of that sort of technology that has to go into the plane has significant costs,” Bray said.

Other than allowing the RPS to respond to identify and respond to incidents around the city quicker, Bray believes having a plane will mean fewer people are hurt or killed in certain situations.

“I’m so excited about what this is going to do for community safety in the City of Regina and the surrounding areas,” he said. “Having that plane up with the thermal imaging can be absolutely something that saves lives.

“That early response can be life-saving when it’s working in conjunction with Regina Fire and Protective Services. So we are very excited about this. It’s going to take us a few months, obviously in the first part of the year to get things together and get this unit set up, but it’s going to be a real positive step for our city.”

Roughly 75 per cent of the costs will be funded by SGI, civil forfeiture and money carrying over from an IT project that didn’t end up using its entire budget.

Bray says the plane is expected to be in service sometime by the summer of 2022.

Mayor Sandra Masters says a plane would be a very valuable tool in the RPS arsenal.

“In terms of everything from tracking speeding vehicles, evasion of police, what they found in Saskatoon was they were spotting more fires, like 20 some a year that no one else had called in yet,” Masters said on Thursday’s Greg Morgan Morning Show. “And missing and vulnerable people, being able to locate them by the heatmap, it’s pretty valuable.”

The $92.8-million net operating budget was approved by councillors John Findura, Jason Mancinelli, Bob Hawkins, Landon Mohl, Terina Shaw and Lori Bresciani as well as Masters.

Councillors Dan LeBlanc, Andrew Stevens, Shanon Zachidniak and Cheryl Stadnichuk voted against it.

The budget will also include funding for 16 new police officers as well as a deputy chief.

There is a roughly $3.5-million increase in 2022’s budget for the police compared to this year.