Join MHPS

Are you thinking about a career in policing? Join us on the Porch with Darren Lole and Kurtis LaDouceur from the Medicine Hat Police Service as they break down everything you need to know about police recruitment in 2026. The officers highlight the importance of community engagement, core values, and the evolving nature of policing. They also discuss the ideal qualities of recruits, the significance of training, and the role of women in law enforcement. Kurtis and Darren touch on modern challenges such as cybercrime and the importance of adaptability in policing.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Recruitment in Policing
02:53 The Importance of Community in Policing
05:53 Core Values and Ideal Recruits
08:45 Adapting to Modern Policing Challenges
11:44 The Role of Women in Policing
14:57 Training and Development of New Recruits
17:44 Closing Thoughts and Recruitment Process

📍 Apply & learn more at the MHPS recruitment page: https://www.mhps.ca/recruitment

Key takeaways

A good recruit is someone with an open mind and willingness to learn.
Community engagement is crucial for effective policing.
Core values of integrity, courage, respect, and accountability are essential.
Policing is adapting to modern challenges, including cybercrime.
Women are increasingly interested in joining the police force.
Training new recruits is a lengthy and expensive process.
Life experience and diverse backgrounds enhance a recruit's candidacy.
Career fairs are valuable for connecting with potential recruits.
The recruitment process is ongoing, with multiple intakes each year.
Persistence is key; applicants should not give up after initial setbacks.

Thank you for listening and sharing you are one in a million! We are excited to announce our community is growing and we couldn't do it with out you! 

Hey we need your support. Like and subscribe to Bring Back The Porch Podcast

Transcript

0:00

Hey, this is Brian again. And I'd like to ask you to do a favor. We can't do this work without people like you. So if you can, please, like, share, subscribe. Tell your friends about bring back the porch. You know what a good recruit is? Somebody who comes in with an open mind and is willing to learn, it is an intensive 27 week training program that we put them through. So, there's obviously ups and downs. There's lots of fitness training, lots of, very hard moments and some fun times, too. So somebody who comes in with an open mind and is willing to learn and then just basically adopt the full core values of the police service and move forward to those core values. This episode of Bring Back the Porch, brought to you by Bernie Leahy, River Street Realty. Let's get you home. Well, we're back here on the porch. And today I have two very special guests. I have Darren Lowell and my good friend Kurtis Lattice are joining us again today. They're here from the medicine hat. Please surface. Welcome to the porch. Thank you. Thank you. It's really nice to have you here. Today we're focusing on recruitment, and I know there is a recruitment drive going on right now. Darren, maybe tell us a little bit about the drive that you're having right now. Basically the the what you're doing to attract new recruits to policing. Absolutely. Yeah. So this is our, second year or third year in a row that we're recruiting. Just two vacancies due to retirements and this type of thing. So we're doing lots of, outreach to universities, colleges, post-secondary type locations. And Chris was in Edmonton yesterday. In Calgary, we try to stick to Alberta, Saskatchewan, BC, as much as we can, and try and just introduce what we do and hand out literature and, trying to attract people to career policing. Kurtis, when you're out and about in communities and talking to people, what stands out about the Medicine Hat Police Service against maybe some of the other places that are recruiting? Well, we always run into other places that are recruiting, and a lot of the bigger centers. Excuse me, but I think what stands out about our services are we we serve as a community, and it's a real community. It's a smaller place. You run into the same people out and about in our officers live and and subside in that community. So it kind of makes it a special policing, special kind of city, not that they don't in Calgary and Edmonton, but that's where I started. Policing was Calgary. But it's more of that community feel here. And I think that that's what makes us special and stand apart. Darren, how did you get, involved in policing? I was in the military for many years, and, I joined the military police in 1989, which seems like a long time ago. And, so, of course, when I came to the, the pinnacle of my military career where I'd reached my retirement point, I was still in my late 30s. So it seemed natural to move on to a civilian policing career at that point. So I'd served here in Canada at the base, and I knew the major. That police is a good work together pretty extensively. So I yeah, that's where I ended up. Joining the National Police is. Now, I noticed that you guys said that you're focusing on, universities, to find recruits. Do you need to have post-secondary education to be a police officer these days? You it's not a minimum requirement. So we have provincial minimum requirements to be a police officer. And the provincial minimum requirement is grade 12. So, then you always hear when you apply for things as the preferred requirements to, as a not required. But we always do like a couple of things. And post-secondary education is always a good indicator because a career in policing is learning the whole time. You've got to learn lots about the law. The law changes all the time. So you've got to continually learn throughout your career as well. So post-secondary education is a good indicator that the person is good for lifetime learning as well. So although not a prerequisite, not a requirement is certainly something we prefer to see that together with some life experience. So touching on that life experience point, Curtis, maybe, what would be some of life experiences you would hope to find with a recruit? Would it be travel? Would it be working in a career that aligns with policing? What would those sort of life things be? Yeah, I think I think it comes down to a good part of any team, and a good part of any team is bringing different aspects and different skills to the job for the common goal. And, and we're no different with, with the policing. My, my background is financing and accounting, and that's what I used to do before I started policing. So it doesn't have to be, strict to policing or anything that that kind of ties directly into policing. We're looking for, for anybody with any backgrounds and various different experiences. So, yeah, travel is great work experiences is also great. There's a number of different things that we're looking for, but everything that makes you who you are and your background, the more you have, makes you more competitive. Between the two of you. Now here's you can go to fisticuffs over this. What makes a good recruit? You know what a good recruit is? Somebody who comes in with an open mind and is willing to learn, it is an intensive 27 week training program that we put them through. So, there's obviously ups and downs. There's lots of fitness training, lots of, very hard moments and some fun times, too. So somebody who comes in with an open mind and is willing to learn and then just basically adopt the full core values of the police service and move forward to those core values. Let's talk about those core values. Maybe there's somebody that's watching or listening that may be interested and want to know if they align with what the medicine Hot Police Service is looking for. So maybe can we just touch on what those core core values are? Our core values are integrity, courage, respect and accountability. And they speak for themselves in the words. But, that's that's kind of what we hope to see in the recruits, or even the person coming in, you know, like Curtis said, they're related to some job experience, having a couple of jobs, maybe some volunteerism, you know, some some giving back to their own community and some volunteer time. That could be coaching Little league or minor hockey or something like that. But, you know, these are all good indicators of a person that's going to be a good police officer later. I know, when we had Deputy Chief Sandy on, he said, like 80% of policing is community work and 20% is almost have a heart attack because it's something's going on and it could be dangerous. Is policing more dangerous now or is it just the perception from cop shows and everything else that it's like pew, pew? And. I think we suffer from the perception from police shows on TV that everything's wrapped up in an hour and that the amazing technology and forensics and it and all this sort of thing that can, you know, bring things together, which is not reality. As we often know, there's a lot of hard work goes into every investigation, and not just the hard work, but also the, proving beyond a reasonable doubt of the person. You know who was involved and protecting everybody's rights over, you know, the victim and the suspect check protected all their charter rights as well. So there's a lot goes into it. I don't necessarily think in places any more dangerous now than it was before. But things change really. Like in medicine that for instance, we, you know, we don't have a big bar scene like we used to have. So years ago, we used to Friday, Saturday night there was, there was always fights outside pubs and bars and things like this. There's less of that now, but then there's more of other issues, social disorder issues, that type of thing. So we adapt to whatever the community needs. And, moving on from there. Maybe. Curtis, let's talk about adaptation for a moment here. You've been a police officer for many years. What have you seen kind of change over the from when you first were policing to now? Do you see social changes? Do you see, changes in how technology has changed policing? What what are the differences? Policing is always changing. And I think that and it's always for the better. So with technology in the crimes. So on the crime side that's always changing. People are finding new ways of doing frauds and scams and trying to keep the risk level that they're taking to complete these frauds or crimes low while keeping the yield high. So doing an armed robbery in a 7-Eleven, like you're not making a bunch of money off of that. But the risk is really, really high. So we're seeing a real uptick in in kind of the cybercrime world because there's there's a larger payout. And, and you can kind of sit at home and do it. Now, that being said, we're seeing a lot of success in our investigations with those, like the grandparent frauds in the last three years, every summer that seems to kind of come around. And we've made arrests over the last three years, every year, which is great. But, so that with the on the crime side, on the internal side with the policing, absolutely. Like technology and ever changing, it's growing. We have a new drone unit now, which is exciting. And we've got pilots and seeing what these drones are capable of and how they interact with police officers. And K9 is really impressive. And that's not just on a criminal side that could also be public safety. If you have somebody with dementia that's wandered, and maybe you're worried that they're going to get too cold the night is coming. That search. Rescue. And yeah, the the capabilities are are endless. And we're always learning on on the best ways and more ways that we can use the technology that that we have available to us. It's pretty exciting time. I just want touch being a female. I'm curious, I know that, women in policing, has grown over the years when it comes to recruiting, are you finding that women are reaching out to find out more information about joining police service, or is it the same? Is it status quo? I, I think I think it's increased, but maybe not just with women across the board, but, certainly we get, a number of applications from female applicants as well. Yeah. I don't think it's increased or decreased. I think it's, I think it's pretty much stayed the same. But, on average each year we've we've probably received every time we advertised, we received less than 100 applicants, probably in the region of 75 to 80 applicants for each process. And I don't know how many percentage would be female, but, it'll be 2010 or 15% maybe. At least. That being said too, though, like like Darren said yesterday I was in Edmonton with a colleague, at at a recruiting fair, a job fair. And the reason why we end up mostly at university colleges, because that's where they hold the job fairs. But it's not always students that show up at the booth to come and talk to us, because we're putting ourselves out there to be accountable. And, and that's the best type, because dressed up like this in our uniforms kind of feel less approachable. So it's always nice to go to these job fairs and, and some of the best conversations and one in particular is the young lady that came up at the end of the day and had just amazing questions like, you know, where do you see yourself in policing and what's the most enjoyable part? And how do you deal with stress and how do you recharge your batteries? And at the end of it, I thought, well, maybe this is just a conversation we're having with this pleasant person in the community, but in the end she's like, okay, yeah, no, I think I seriously think about it now. So that was almost a, reverse interview for whether she wanted to get into policing. So it's very beneficial to have us out there, but we're seeing more and more. I did yesterday anyway, up in Edmonton, a lot of females approaching us and a lot of males approaching us as well. But, but it was about 5050. And it's nice to be approachable, you know, and it's nice to be open because if you're not in the world of policing, it seems like very much like we're busy or we're doing this or we're doing that, and especially in the bigger centers, it kind of goes back to that community comment that I made that where we are a part of the community. And if you don't know a police officer, you know somebody who does know a police officer, but it's nice to get to the bigger center and actually be approachable and have really good boundaries. Conversations with people that would otherwise not have conversation with the police officer. So I know, like, Training a police officer. Once you're trained, you are a very expensive piece of the puzzle because it doesn't come cheap to train an officer and to to get them in into the ranks and get them going and, and and eating with you. And I know you have partners that you work with when you do the recruitment cycle and you do the training process. Is it, through the college and through the railway that you kind of partner with to, kind of do these training sessions with other, beneficial partners? Yeah. So the, the training itself is hosted here in medicine and the police station, obviously, we have outlying locations we go to for like driver training, etc.. But it's a 27 week course. And at the end of that 27 weeks, assuming the officer passes all the training, they, they're assigned to a field coach and basically they work a normal patrol shift, but not on their own that were the field trainers. So that's up to another 12 weeks with the field training. So now we're up to 30, 39 weeks of training effectively. And that's before the law on the road. And then they're probationary constable as well for that period. Yeah. The cost is extensive. That's a lot. That's a lot of training time. We partner with the, the mesonet college, keeping it local as we can. We used to partner Lethbridge College, but. So we recently switched to medicine at college. It's a local college. Right. And, they provide us with some of the trainers as well, who come in and teach. And it's a great program. They, get some college credits out of it at the end of it as well. And, we're also, there's a new first responder academy coming out too, as well. So that's a that's an area where, you know, we're we're helping and assisting and they'll be training and doing some of their, you know, their school work and training on the third floor of the police station. So, again, we'll have exposure to them as well, an earlier stage. But, yeah, it's been it's intensively expensive to train a recruit, up to the point of being an officer on the street on their own. But, we get the right people through that, and then the retention is good thereafter. For a long career. What is, what is your favorite part about being on this recruitment team and going out in the community, talking to these people that are potential going to work beside you? What, like, have you had that person that you've seen at the, excuse me, the, career fair now they're on the street. What's that like? What's that process like for you guys? I think one of the rewarding thing, obviously, university courses are not one year, right? They're two, three years sometimes. So having gone to a couple of career fairs in previous years, you meet the person who asked you all the questions, then the following year you meet the same person and they're still interested, but that not ready. And then the third year you meet the same person. Now they're ready. So it's exciting to keep track of some people that really want to get into it and stick to it, and will come and ask the relevant questions when they needed to be asked, and then to see their application after that. It's very rewarding. And also, if I can add to it, going out to these career fairs and meeting these young people who have all these questions, you know that and they're excited about it. It's it's contagious. Right. And it it it gets you excited about policing again. I've been policing for 18 years and not as exciting as continuous learning and everything like that. But it's nice to see somebody who's really looking forward to wearing that uniform and wants to get into policing and serve the community, and it kind of recharge your batteries like, this is this is a fun job. And, and, and you hold an important part to the community. Now, could you tell me how when's the cutoff? When are you? March 31st. March 31st? Yeah. So if anybody is watching or listening to this, they want to get a hold of you. What is the best way to get their faces in front of you guys? If the, easiest option for them is to go on to our website, aka and there's a tab on the left side that says recruiting. So they click on that. It will give them absolutely all the information they need. And together with the stages of the recruitment and some study materials for the testing and on that, there's also a link to our email address, which is recruiting at LCA. And that's a joint email that the recruiters have access to. And we answer all inquiries through. That's excellent. And I think, you know, if you didn't succeed the first time, that doesn't mean you shouldn't you shouldn't give up if you the physical isn't quite there. You've got another intake coming up probably next year. We do. Yes. So this is for a class in September of this year. We're cut off in March for a class of September. And then, we'll after this cut off, we'll start recruiting for the 2027 calendar year. Probably about the same timeline. But, you know, if you don't think you're quite there, reach out to us, come and do the testing and get a benchmark of where you are and get some tips, some training tips, perhaps, or some tips on the written tests, or how to prepare for them. The written tests are good for five years, so if you pass them here, Calgary, Edmonton or wherever, they're good for five years. So the following year you wouldn't have to do them again. And obviously there's certain requirements that people need to meet the vision standard, the hearing stamp, that type of thing. So it's always good to reach out to a recruiter and ask questions. Excellent. Well, Curtis and Darren, thank you very much for joining me on the porch today. Look forward to seeing the graduating class this spring. For 2026. And we'll see what 2027 brings. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Yes, thank you very much. I'm.