Police See An Uptick In Weapons And Drugs
They may not have seen them but anecdotally the Moose Jaw Police Service (MJPS) has heard about growing numbers of weapons - including guns - and drugs on Moose Jaw streets.
During the media scrum following Wednesday afternoon’s public meeting of the Moose Jaw Board of Police Commissioners senior MJPS staff answered questions about weapons and drugs
Asked by MJ Independent about the appearance of weapons Deputy Chief Rick Johns said “anecdotally yes we are.”
“We are hearing about more weapons. We are seeing more weapons. And some of the enforcement initiatives we are taking…warrant executions we are seeing more frequently weapons in places where we may do a kick or warrant execution for drugs. We are finding more weapons than we have in the past,” he said.
Johns said it wasn’t handguns in particular the police were seeing, but it was a smattering of all kinds of weapons.
He spoke about the MJPS encountering modified long guns that are sawed off or modified to make them smaller.
“We’re just seeing different types of weapons.”
Although newer to the community Chief of Police Robert Davis said he knew about incidents where modified weapons had been confiscated.
“There has been three off the top of my head (incidents) where we seized modified weapons…a long gun that has been sawed off,” Chief Davis said.
Although the MJPS has not found a lot of hand guns he said they had been hearing anecdotally they are out there in the community.
He encouraged members of the public if they knew about any firearms being used for wrongful purposes that they go through Moose Jaw Crome Stoppers where anonymously they could report them so the police could take action.
“That information will help direct us in the right direction to get those weapons off the street. And we can lay charges.”
The Chief spoke about two recent drug arrests by the same rookie MJPS officer as an example of drugs and weapons out in the community.
One of the arrests was called in by a citizen who saw something suspicious traffic related that turned into a drug bust.
“It turned out to be significant drug trafficking,” he said.
“The other one was just the officer‘s keen sense of observation. He saw suspicious activity and commenced an investigation that led to that one about a week and a half ago on the media and led to a significant amount of fentanyl, cocaine, other drugs, cash and weapons. That one was huge.”
The drugs confiscated were about 200 doses the Chief said adding with the large number of overdoses lately you had to look at “how many lives did he (the officer) save by making sure that didn’t get on the street?”
Moose Jawxhas seen a rash of overdoses lately.
“That was good old fashioned police work.”
About the seeming increase of narcotics in the community the Chief said although he is relatively new so he did not know about the before but the MJPS officers are aware and as a police service they have to be vigilant.
Chief Davis said Moose Jaw was a good city and not only the MJPS but everybody had to work together to maintain that. The MJPS needed information from the community in order to take the drugs off of the streets.