Deputy Mayor Ron Aiken says he’s pleased that Sackville has a new Community Program Officer (CPO) to work with local young people in fostering good relations with police and in preventing crime.

Lise Babineau, who served as CPO in Moncton and Southeastern New Brunswick for nearly nine years from 2009 to 2018, took up her duties in Sackville on October 5th.

“I think a lot of other communities in New Brunswick envy Sackville for having a Community Program Officer,” Aiken said, adding that most CPOs serve whole regions not just single towns.

The town had almost no warning when Jean-Francois LeBlanc, who served as CPO for more than three years, left the job in December apparently because his position under Sackville’s Municipal Police Services Agreement would not be protected in a unionized RCMP.

Although LeBlanc was an RCMP employee, the town paid for his salary under an arrangement that began in 2013 when Amélie Jarvis-Lavoie was hired as Sackville’s first CPO after the federal government agreed to cover 30% of the town’s policing costs.

“The first CPO we had started working with younger people that were sort of on the track to get into trouble and she managed to divert them away from what they were doing and get on to some more reasonable behaviour,” Aiken says, adding that all of the CPOs have been very good.

“We’ve been quite lucky with the quality of people we got.”

So far, Sackville’s new CPO has not responded to e-mail and phone messages, but her profile on Linked In says that she holds a degree in Community Studies from Cape Breton University.

After leaving her post as CPO for Moncton and the Southeast, Babineau worked in community economic development for Opportunities New Brunswick and as a community development consultant for the Vitalité Health Network.

She also describes herself as a singer and song writer.