Specialty Units | Owen Sound Police Service

Community Oriented Response Unit (CORE)

Police officers on the CORE team apply the community policing philosophy to address and solve community issues, conduct foot and bicycle patrol in the River District and parks, and promote positive interaction between police and citizens to prevent crime and improve community safety.

Mobile Mental Health and Addiction Response Team (MMHART)

The MMHART team is made up of an Owen Sound Police Officer who has training in mental health and addictions, as well as a Crisis Worker from the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA). MMHART responds to all types of calls within Owen Sound and supports individuals with finding housing, accessing mental health or addiction supports and treatment services. MMHART works closely with the Psychiatry from the hospital, the addictions treatment centres, as well as all services available through CMHA and the community.

Communications Centre

The Owen Sound Emergency Communications Centre (OSECC) has provided professional radio communications to emergency services for over 30 years across Ontario. The OSECC currently serves a population of over 370,000 across 28 municipalities, 2 First Nations Communities, and 48 different locations. Depending on each agency’s requirements, OSECC provides primary and secondary 911 services, call taking and/or dispatching, or centrally hosted call handling.

Owen Sound Emergency Communications Centre (OSECC)

Community Services

The Community Services Officer (CSO), Special Constable Jason Cranny, is a liaison with local schools and Georgian College in addition to organizations working with priority populations. The CSO promotes and strengthens community partnerships, attends community events, and facilitates the Youth In Policing Initiative (YIPI).

Criminal Investigations

A team of OSPS Detectives are highly trained to conduct in-depth criminal investigations and support front-line police officers with offences such as sexual assault, robbery, or fraud. Specialized officers focus on higher level drug trafficking and organized crime. OSPS Detectives often work on joint operations with other police jurisdictions and the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) resources are available to support OSPS criminal investigations as needed.

Forensic Identification

Forensic Identification provides support to Criminal Investigations and front-line officers. There are two Forensic identification Officers (FIO) that have been accredited as Forensic Identification Officers by the Ontario Police College and 8 Scenes of Crime Officers (SOCO). The officers attend crime scenes for scene documentation and the preservation, collection and examination of evidence for presentation before the courts. The officers examine the crime scene for physical evidence such as latent fingerprints, DNA, blood and footwear impressions and use advanced techniques to analyze and identify evidence.

Court Services

Court Security Officers are Special Constables that carry out a variety of duties, including: admitting and caring of people in custody who need to appear in court; court security; and court access control and transportation.

Records

Professional Records staff provide a vital role to the community and to OSPS members, supporting front-line police officers and enabling them to effectively serve the community. Some of their responsibilities in Records include: processing persons who have been arrested; answering general calls for information and station walk-ins; maintaining information in the Canadian Police Information Centre; responding to Freedom of information requests; and processing charges laid by officers.

The men and women in this department play

Training

Continuous training is taken very seriously. After our new officers come back from police college, all of our training in firearms, taser, speed enforcement, defensive tactics and first aid happen in-house and are delivered by our trainers. We hold courses in Field Sobriety Testing, and Scenes-of-Crime, and we regularly send our members to conferences and courses to develop their careers and expand our capabilities. OSPS invests a lot of time and resources into training our members.

Information Technology

Along with day-to-day IT help and support, the OSPS IT maintains the 911 and administrative phone lines, radios, Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system, custom applications and data that supports the operations of the Owen Sound Police Service and many of the other police and fire agencies operated through the Owen Sound Emergency Communications Centre. OSPS IT was the first agency in Canada to transfer Emergency Incident Data Objects (EIDO) and is leading the Next Generation (NG) 911 call hosted solution development which will be live in 2024. The IT department is responsible for systems covering approximately 500,000 residents in 9 counties across the Province.