The city is in good hands with the first winner of Moose Jaw Police’s Chief for A Day essay contest — 10-year-old Dani Brazeal, from the fifth-grade class at King George Elementary School.
Brazeal took first place with her essay, which meant she spent the morning in MJPS Chief Rick Bourassa’s shoes — well, actually in his hat.
The contest asked students to explain what they would do to help the city, if they were the police chief for a day. Brazeal chose to focus her essay on the police station itself: she suggested Tim Hortons for all the officers on special occasions and letting the police dogs in the K-9 Unit off duty once in a while to enjoy some dog-related fun.
“I felt like a lot of other people will be doing stuff in the city, like helping, and I wanted to help the city too. I just thought the police station is very important also,” said Brazeal.
She was even prepared to defend her plan, as she presented it to the management board and explained that the dogs would get their play breaks in shifts, so there would always be a group on duty.
Brazeal was over-the-moon excited to enter the contest when she heard about it, and even more so when she won.
“I wanted to win so bad,” said Brazeal. “I'm just really curious about police work and what they do all day, and I just want to see the city of Moose Jaw from different angles, like how they see it and how they do their job.”
The pair of police chiefs posed together, and Chief Rick Bourassa declared the city was in safe hands with Chief Dani Brazeal. Brazeal’s enthusiasm is the reason her essay was chosen, admitted Cst. Kyle Cunningham from Strategic Services.
“I think you could see her excitement, just in the writing that she did,” said Cst. Cunningham. “You could tell that she was excited about this opportunity and she shared that with us too. . . and then to win it was awesome, just the cherry on top.”
Cst. Cunningham was Brazeal’s escort for the day as they toured the police station, met with the board to present Brazeal’s suggestions, visited the K-9 Unit, stopped to see Brazeal’s parents, and took Chief Bourassa for lunch.
This is the first time MJPS has organized this opportunity and Cst. Cunningham feels it went very well.
“I'd like us to look at continuing in the future. I think it's a cool opportunity, for somebody to come in and get a view of what we do,” said Cst. Cunningham. “There were some cool ideas that [the students] had to share.”
