The Barrie Police Service is recruiting officers to fill vacancies left by retirements and natural attrition that occurred in 2021, but after the success of our experienced officer recruitment earlier this year, the Service is once again looking for applicants who already have experience as a sworn police officer.
“Earlier this year, we hired a number of experienced officers, to provide immediate resources to our front-line platoons,” said Sergeant Jason Frye with the Barrie Police Service Recruiting Unit. “These officers have been a welcomed addition to our Service and have been able to use their past experiences dealing with high a volume of calls, and a wide variety of calls, to help in our community.”
“I joined the Barrie Police Service as an experienced officer in February of this year,” said Constable Jakob Banner. “I had approximately three years of experience as an officer, in everything from front line policing to production orders, but the opportunity to move back to my home province and be a part of the Barrie community was a big draw for me.”
Recruiting experienced officers allows the Service to deploy the new hires more quickly into our community. Experienced officers have already attended the Ontario Police College, they’ve already spent time with a coach officer, and have experience with different types of calls and occurrences.
Officers who are chosen to join the Barrie Police Service will still spend two weeks working with the Service’s Training Unit to become familiar with specific procedures and policies, as well as four weeks with a partner to become familiar with the mobile workstation, the radio procedures, and the layout of the city itself, but the turnaround time from hiring to full deployment is much shorter.
Constable Banner is already seeing the benefits to working closer to home.
“It’s definitely been a positive change for me,” said Constable Banner. ‘I’ve been able to have a better work/life balance, and the policing experience that I brought with me has helped as I’ve been working the front-line in Barrie. I’ve really enjoyed the strong focus on community policing that the Barrie Police Service has. Barrie has an amazing team; from front-line to Command and has the potential for vast career opportunities.”
For more information, or to apply as an experienced officer, please visit https://www.barriepolice.ca/experienced-officers/. Applicants selected for the next round of the recruiting process will still be required to pass additional screenings including a competency-based interview, a questionnaire to test their knowledge of the Barrie community, as well as a fitness test. It is hoped that the successful candidates could be on the road as soon as February 2023.