By Mallory Procunier A joint partnership between the RCMP in Winnipeg and the Winnipeg Police Service (WPS) that tracks down fugitives is celebrating its 1,000th arrest. Since September 2011, the Warrant Apprehension Unit has been locating individuals in Winnipeg and the surrounding area who face outstanding warrants for violent offences. The unit was created to dedicate a team solely to looking for the almost 30,000 wanted people in the province at that time. “It’s freeing up the general patrol officers on the street who were running into wanted people all the time, which was taking them out of their general patrol duties,” says Sgt. John O’Donovan of WPS. The unit comprises three members from each policing agency. Teams are split into two and operate out of WPS headquarters where they have access to a forensic identification lab, a central lock-up and both the RCMP and WPS reporting tools. This way, if a suspect is caught, he or she can be processed at WPS headquarters and the team can be back out in the field in an hour. As a cohesive unit, each police agency is benefitting from the expertise of the other. O’Donovan says that the RCMP brings rural experience to the urban centre, and WPS gives the RCMP an extended group of contacts and information to help with these types of cases. “If the RCMP detachments require assistance in locating a wanted subject, they can ask our unit for assistance,” says Cpl. Glen Binda of the RCMP in Winnipeg. “If we didn’t have access to WPS police information, it would be very difficult to locate these subjects.” And by being on the street five days a week, the unit is making it a lot harder for fugitives to hide these days. “We find that when we arrest somebody who’s breached their bail, they’re usually not getting bail again and we’re getting a lot of good things that are going through the courts a lot quicker,” O’Donovan says. “We’re even getting guilty pleas coming from some of them.”
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 16:05:57 +0000
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