Seven new police officers are ready to start work in Lethbridge, Taber and the Blood Tribe. The new constables were handed their badges on Sept. 15, after 22 weeks of training at Lethbridge College.
They will now have three weeks of in-house training in the police departments and 18 weeks of field training before hitting the streets alone.
This year’s graduates are:
Lethbridge Police Service
Alison McCulloch, Taylor Toner and Marc Trotta
Blood Tribe Police Service
Austin Giant and Kalib Thunder Chief
Taber Police Service
Cobe Cobarrubias and Brandon Demers
Lethbridge Police Chief Shahin Mehdizadeh says he has worked one-on-one with the cadets joining his team and got to know them, adding now it is time for them to get to know the community.
“Every graduation day is a special day not only for the graduating class, but for the police services they represent and also the community that they are going to be serving so it’s an amazing day and I am glad we were able to share that moment with them,” he says.
The Lethbridge Police Service has been focused on recruiting and Mehdizadeh says the three new constables will have a huge impact on the force.
“We are looking for people and we are looking for more people — in fact we have started organizing two cadet classes a year that are going to be going on for the next three years, so we can actually have a more aggressive method to attract candidates,” he says.
