School resources officers a valuable safety option

The recent Manitoba throne speech placed crime and public safety at the heart of the provincial agenda. It declared: “No matter where you live in Manitoba you should feel safe — at home, at your neighbourhood park, downtown.”

But this aspiration runs up against an undeniable reality: Winnipeg continues to face some of the highest violent-crime rates of any major Canadian city. The Winnipeg Police Service report released in May 2025 found that the total crime severity index from 2018 to 2024 was significantly higher in Winnipeg than the Canadian average, and the violent crime index even more so. In 2024, assaults against peace officers reached a recent historic high, increasing for the third year in a row.

Youth crimes are particularly concerning. This summer, youth only 13 and 14 years old were arrested for machete attacks at Polo Park and for an armed robbery involving a firearm at the Unicity Walmart. Statistics back up these anecdotal horrors. The Winnipeg Police Service’s Annual Statistical Report for 2023 indicates youth crime trended upward for the second consecutive year — increasing by 23.1 per cent over 2022 and 14.3 per cent above the five-year average. Violent youth crimes were an alarming 43.4 per cent higher than the five-year average, though early data suggest the incidence of violent youth crime declined in 2024.

Crime is complex and has no single cause. As WPS Chief Gene Bowers rightly said when releasing the most recent report: “Community safety is at the core of everything we do, but it is not simply possible for us to improve the safety and well-being of our community on our own.” As Winnipeg Free Press columnist Dan Lett has underscored, the issue is far more complicated than political slogans suggest. Crime is not driven solely by bail decisions or court backlogs — although those matter.

It is rooted in poverty, addictions, childhood trauma, under-resourced schools, unstable housing and frayed social supports. Winnipeg’s challenges sit precisely at these intersections. Lett argues there are no easy answers, and he is right. Sustainable progress requires strategies that are not only tough on crime but also smart, fair and grounded in community trust, especially in communities that have experienced generations of marginalization.

This is why the tradition of community-engaged policing remains important. Winnipeg has been fortunate to have leaders like former chief Devon Clunis, who emphasizes in his memoir “One” that policing is not merely enforcement but a partnership with families, schools and neighbourhoods.

His message was consistent: safety is built on relationships, not simply arrests. Officers who know young people — and are known by them — help prevent crises before they happen. That was certainly Clunis’s experience as a school resource officer, which he writes “was the best part of my career.” For five years, in the 52 schools he served, he spoke at assemblies, met with students and parents, listened, explained and offered guidance.

“It served the deepest part of my purpose in policing,” he concludes.

The Winnipeg School Division, however, ended its school resources officer program in 2021, primarily for budgetary reasons, not because evidence showed it was failing.

Across Canada, the strongest evidence comes from places like Calgary and Edmonton, where resource officer programs were not abolished, but re-imagined. Their updated models emphasize: officers chosen for mentorship and youth-work ability, not simply policing experience; strong training in trauma, equity, cultural safety and adolescent development; clear limits on involvement in routine school discipline; transparency, community oversight and annual public reporting; and, relationship-building as the core of the job.

When resource officers operate in this way — as bridges, not enforcers — they support schools under pressure, help de-escalate tensions and create positive early contact between police and youth who may otherwise only encounter officers in moments of crisis.

The value of the officers was demonstrated in Brandon in June. Unlike the Winnipeg School Division, Brandon maintains a program that emphasizes proactive planning between educators and police. That planning was put to the test on June 10 when someone entered École secondaire Neelin High School wearing a disguise and armed with a sword. A student contacted Const. Moshe Linov directly; he responded within three minutes and the attacker was subdued.

“We build relationships with students and staff, and it’s a trust relationship,” Linov said. “Any call, any text, I will respond — and I did respond.”

Winnipeg should learn from Brandon. The absence of resource officers leaves schools, especially in high-needs neighbourhoods, without a structured mechanism for building trust between young people and police. It is not realistic to expect principals, teachers and counsellors alone to manage the increasingly complex mix of safety concerns, gang-recruitment pressures, social-media-driven conflicts and acute mental-health crises that students now bring into classrooms.

A properly structured, transparent, culturally safe and relationship-driven program could offer early intervention, build bridges in communities that too often feel excluded and relieve pressure on schools already stretched beyond their limits.

The throne speech signalled that crime and public safety are top priorities for Manitoba. The next challenge is designing solutions that go beyond enforcement and address the deeper conditions that shape youth behaviour.

A re-imagined resource officer program will not solve Winnipeg’s crime challenge on its own — but it could be one useful piece of a wider, more balanced strategy that finally aligns community trust, prevention and public safety.

» Thomas S. Axworthy is public policy chair at Massey College. This column previously appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press.