In the next year recruitment is one of the main priorities for the Lethbridge Police Service.
Chief Shahin Mehdizadeh says the reason this is a top focus in 2024 is that to continue the work the city police do they need to have the right resources, and thanks to support from Lethbridge City Council the department’s budget and funded positions have seen an increase.
“Every year we want to hire at least 12, but my direction to recruiting is to hire as many as you can. We don’t want to put numbers, but we are figuring if you hire 12 for the next couple of years we will be in a position to have all of our positions filled,” Mehdizadeh says. “So right now we are going to have eight people go through our February class, and I am hoping all of them are going to succeed.”
Lethbridge’s top cop says that the way the department recruits has also seen a change, with LPS scheduled to hold two recruitment classes a year in both 2024 and 2025. He explains this allows the service to be more aggressive in their recruitment by being able to say “If you can’t make it for the February class, we have a class in July,” which is an option one person has reportedly taken already. By holding the two classes Mehdizadeh says the department will not only be able to fill the vacancies they have currently, but they will also be able to move forward with a three-stage plan for the local police service.
“Number one is filling the vacancies that we currently have, number two is adding the additional officers we are currently funded for, and number three in fact, I would like to have more officers than we are funded for.”
At any given time Mehdizadeh says the department has six to seven officers who are not working for various number of reasons, so by over hiring the department will be able to keep their ranks at full service, and better serve the community. He adds for these reasons the police service has increased the size of the recruiting department from one to three people.
“We have two police officers, we have hired a civilian who has been able to do a lot of the administrative work because I don’t want the officers to be doing that. I want the recruiters to be recruiting.”
Last year LPS sent these officers outside of not only the City of Lethbridge but also the province for recruiting assignments that included stops in Prince Edward Island, Ontario and British Columbia to name a few.
“So they are actually going outside of the province marketing our city and marketing our community. In fact, we have people from Victoria from the York region and other locations who have applied to come here.”
In 2023 LPS reportedly hired 11 new police officers and Community Peace Officers, along with 14 out of the 15 and hired 14 out of the 15 open civilian positions.
