Turner Valley’s top officer is settling into her new post with an open mind and open door.
Laura Akitt began her role as Turner Valley RCMP Staff Sgt. Oct. 21, replacing Dwayne Helgeson who left the detachment in July. Cpl. Tiffany McGregor filled in the past four months.
“I love Turner Valley, it’s beautiful,” she said. “When the opportunity arose to apply for this position I was extremely excited. I did all of the ranching type activities growing up, like 4-H and all of that, so I can definitely relate to the ranching and farming ideals. It’s like coming home.”
The welcome mat was extended to Akitt at the detachment, as well as in the community, and she’s returning the sentiment.
“I very much have an open door policy,” she said. “If people see me in the community I want them to come and say ‘hi.’”
Akitt recently visited Eden Valley where she played floor hockey with the Boys and Girls Club. She plans to connect more with youth by visiting schools in the area.
“The children are the future and we want to enforce positive relationships between the RCMP and children,” she said. “I’ll probably join the board of directors for the Boys and Girls Club in Eden Valley.”
Also on Akitt’s to-do list is connecting with Citizens on Patrol and emergency services in the area.
“I very much believe that it takes a community, in a lot of sense, for policing,” she said. “There’s things that, as a community, we can proactively work together on to jointly look after security and property, things like that. I just want to see where everybody is at and see if there’s anything we can do for a more community-minded solution.”
Akitt grew up on a ranch north of Waterton Lakes National Park and attended school in Pincher Creek.
She got her start with the RCMP while working as a Parks Canada employee in Waterton.
Upon developing a close relationship with RCMP members in the park, Akitt joined the auxiliary program and delighted in the opportunity to work with the public as a second set of eyes alongside the RCMP.
Five years later, she applied to become an officer.
“Just the whole interacting with policing and accountability and being there when people need assistance really caught my attention,” she said. “I really enjoyed my time in the auxiliary program and I felt this could be a good career.”
Akitt was first posted in Fort Saskatchewan near Edmonton, where she worked for seven years.
“There were a lot of senior members with a lot of experience,” she said. “I was able to get a good background and training while I was there and I was welcomed in the community.”
Akitt then transferred to Canmore, where she worked the next six years in a more transient environment.
“Fort Saskatchewan was very business centred, but Canmore had a very close knit base of local people that had been there since it was a mining town and then you have a large population of weekenders,” she said. “With Canmore being right on the cusp of the national park, you get a lot of transient employees.”
As a result, the pace was faster as investigations were more time sensitive, said Akitt.
“People were moving in and out of the community frequently,” she said. “In the Canmore area there was a lot centred around search and rescue that we didn’t necessarily deal with in Fort Saskatchewan.”
After Canmore, Akitt transferred to High River where she worked for five years in the ranching and farming community.
“After living in Fort Saskatchewan and then Canmore it was like coming home,” she said. “It’s a different style of policing than business orientated and outdoor adventure orientated.”
Akitt’s next post was the Cardston detachment, where she served as an interim commander for six months before being promoted as sergeant detachment commander in Fort Macleod.
After four years there, Akitt moved to Calgary where she worked for a year in Professional Standards Investigations with the Calgary Police Service.
“I wanted to work more in the human resources side of the organization to get more familiar with those processes,” she said. “It was an opportunity to get more education and training within the internal human resources. It’s definitely given me a lot of insight into the internal process within the organization.”
It’s a skillset Akitt is bringing to her position in Turner Valley.
