The Sarnia Police Service welcomed aboard three new members Thursday morning, including the service's 12th female officer.
A swearing-in ceremony was held from the police training centre at Lambton Mall to recognize Constables Asad Amir, Joshua Bayne, and Danielle Johnson.
Chief Derek Davis believes it's critical that the service is representative of the community.
"That includes males and females. It also includes a diverse perspective in terms of backgrounds, cultures, different experiences, and our police service is working to reflect that."
Around 10 per cent of the service's 124 person complement are women, well below the national average of about 22 per cent. Deputy Chief Julie Craddock, sworn in last month, is the only female officer in a leadership role.
Davis said the new additions are filling vacancies within the organization.
"We always have officers that retire, people that move on and we are always in a state of hiring and filling those vacancies. In the case if there's extra approvals, as there was this year for different jobs and functions, we are in the process of filling those positions as quickly as possible," he said.
Davis said the swearing-in ceremony is a big milestone for any police officer.
"They've gone through a lot of work, they've gone through a difficult application process, they've gone through difficult training, they've had to pass a whole bunch of hurdles to bring themselves into this room today to be sworn in as a police constable," he said. "It's a difficult job, it's certainly not a job for everyone, and for the people that do make it all the way, this is the day where they officially become a police officer.
David said the next phase of their journey is to join their coach officer and start doing police work.
He added that the service is actively working to improve its internal processes and efficiencies to ensure they're optimizing what resources they already have.
"Once we've gotten to that phase, if there is still work to be done, that's when I would say we would need additional resources, but right now we are doing a number of steps across the entire organization to ensure that we are using every resource that we have available to achieve the most of our objectives that we can possibly do," he said.
Thursday's ceremony also recognized two recently promoted officers, Sgt. Jordan Dufton and Sgt. Steve Ruetz.
