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Regina's city council covered a lot of ground in a three-hour meeting on Wednesday. With all members in attendance, coun...
It has been one week since a Saskatoon inquest jury determined that James Smith Cree Nation killer Myles Sanderson died from an accidental cocaine overdose, and offered four recommendations for police.
One of those recommendations was directed at the Saskatoon Police Service to “consider establishing a dedicated team tasked with arresting individuals who are subject to outstanding warrants for their arrest.”
According to inquest testimony from Det. Supt. Ken Kane, the 32-year-old Sanderson was granted statutory release from the Saskatchewan Penitentiary in late August of 2021. Several months later, Sanderson breached his release conditions when he was found living with his ex-common law partner, Vanessa Burns.
In February of 2022 he was again released to live with his father in Saskatoon, but three months later, Sanderson again breached his conditions by contacting Burns.
At that time, it was Saskatoon police that were in charge of the warrant issued for his arrest. However other than notifying fellow officers about the warrant and conducting periodic checks at Sanderson’s home, no additional action was taken.
During the inquest, Kane told the jury the SPS had 2,185 outstanding warrants, with 1,573 for Saskatoon addresses.
Blair Pellerin, the superintendent of Saskatoon’s Criminal Investigation Division, said while the jury recommendation was “good,” there are a lot of competing priorities within various departments.
“I can’t turn a switch on or off and, say, take five members off of my frontline patrol and create a team that solely that looks at tracking down people that are wanted on warrants,” he said.
And that goes for every other department. That said, Pellerin added that offender management is important. Many of the positions dealing with offender management are provincially funded, but there is no one person or persons tasked with enforcing warrant management.
Quite often, Pellerin said, those who perform checks or look for individuals wanted on outstanding warrants come from the Guns and Gang Unit.
“We will task that team out to try and track down that suspect,” he said.
Generally, to commit that unit to look for someone, the person in question has previously committed serious crimes against another person.
In Sanderson’s case, Pellerin doesn’t believe that with the resources available to them, officers would have been able to locate him before the murders occurred on Sept. 4, 2022.
Sanderson killed 11 people and injured 17 others during the attacks on the James Smith Cree Nation and in nearby Weldon. He died three days later after going into medical distress after his arrest.
While there is communication between parole officers around those who have breached their conditions, if the SPS had readily available officers and had the police known just how dangerous Sanderson was, Pellerin said they would have dedicated “huge amounts of resources” to locating him.
“There are a number of similar Myles Sandersons that breach their parole conditions, and are out in our community,” he revealed.
As of February of 2023, there are about 900 criminal warrants, mostly for people who’ve given addresses in Saskatoon.
So what would it take for SPS officers to be able to consistently follow up on violent criminal offender warrants? Basically, Pellerin said, it would take more money.
“I think it would take a determination that there’s actual funds available, whether that’s in our municipal police budget or if we were able to get funding elsewhere,” he added.
Right now, the priority is for more frontline police officers, and increasing the officers on the Serious Assault and Tech Crimes units.
For now, Pellerin doesn’t see much changing. He added that when a parolee breaks their conditions, they’re also not going to “hang out” waiting to be arrested.
“They go into flight mode and trying to track them down is an intense process. It takes a team to track someone down,” he said.
At this point, the 2024 and 2025 budget for the Saskatoon Police Service has been approved and set by city council, and there doesn’t appear to be any additional money for additional positions from the provincial government either.