The Belleville Police Service will be hosting its 4th annual Women in Policing event on November 20, 2024.
“We’ve run this event just to help in terms of an understanding of females that may be interested or haven’t even thought of a career in policing or as a special constable,” Deputy Police Chief Sherri Meeks tells Quinte News.
“It’s an opportunity to come into our police station and interact with members of our department and understand some of the various units that work within the Belleville Police Service.”
Attendees will be able to learn about the hiring process, have an opportunity to network with the service’s special constables and constables, and understand the benefits of a policing career.
Meeks says there have been attendees that have gone on to become police constables after taking part.
The event is part of a plan to have more women join the police force .
“Our initiative is to have 30 by 30. In other words, 30% of our police department female by 2030,” Meeks said.
“Currently we are almost at 23% so we’re trending in the right direction from when I started policing many, many years ago, when it was 16%. So we still have a long way to go, but we are moving in the right direction, and this event is just one way that we can try to to recruit and diversify our police service.”
Meeks says the event is interactive, with participants able to learn more about the different departments in the force.
“So all the different units that we have here, traffic, forensics, our Criminal Investigations Division, our frontline division, you as an individual can come and speak to those members, those females, and find out, how have they done it? What did they do? What has worked for them? Could they balance a family life? You know, all of those questions that many people have when they’re getting involved in a career,” Meeks says.
With her new role as the Deputy Chief of Police, Meeks says she will be doing more leadership of the event as opposed to organization.
She says that doesn’t take away from how passionate she is about having the event in place.
“It’s meaningful to me because I’ve seen the success of it,” Meeks said.
“The success moving forward is, the more that we can have different perspectives in our police service, the better we’re going to be for the community that we serve.”
The event takes place from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Belleville Police Headquarters on November 20, 2024.
More information can be found at Belleville police’s website.
