Saint John’s new police chief is stepping down after less than a year on the job due to “personal reasons.”
Stephan Drolet will resign effective Feb. 20, according to a statement Friday from the Saint John Police Commission.
“Chief Drolet had a number of issues he was dealing with from a personal side,” Ed Keyes, chair of the commission, said in an interview. “He made the difficult decision, as he said to me, just as recently as this week that he had to step down.”
Drolet joined the force on Feb. 24, 2020, after 27 years with the RCMP, most recently serving as British Columbia’s deputy criminal operations officer.
He assumed the role from interim chief Bruce Connell, who came out of retirement in April 2018 to replace outgoing chief John Bates.
“It’s quite frankly a loss for the Saint John Police Force,” Keyes said of Drolet’s departure. “While he had only been with us for a year, he accomplished a lot.”
Keyes said Drolet accomplished a lot during his short time, which include work on the force’s new strategic plan and developing a diversity committee with a number of community members.
Drolet has also been heavily involved in controversial efforts to equip the force’s officers with body cameras.
Community members, including Black Lives Matter New Brunswick, called on the force to delay the rollout until the camera’s usage policy was made public.
Mayor Don Darling had planned to ask the police commission to do just that in November, but the meeting was postponed. Darling resigned from the commission in December, saying he no longer wanted to have his comments “filtered or withheld” because of board governance rules.
To date, the policy has not been made public and the body cameras have not been rolled out.
Drolet’s resignation comes amid labour negotiations between the commission and the association representing the city’s police officers. Keyes said the departure of Drolet will not slow progress.
“They’ll be no hiccup there. That will continue with the negotiation team that the chief had put in place some time ago,” he said.
Tony Hayes, who was named deputy chief in late October, will lead the force for the time being.
Keyes said the commission has a “high degree of confidence” in Hayes and the senior leadership of the force.
“[Drolet] had a senior management team that he had put together which is well-versed and very capable and the commission is very pleased with the group that’s there,” said Keyes.
In the meantime, Keyes said the commission will work with Organization Consulting Limited (OCL) to help find the chief’s replacement.
“It’ll obviously take a little bit of time, but the good news is we have experience in doing it, so we’ll just have to buckle down and move to find his replacement,” he said.
OCL was the same consulting firm used during the search for Drolet.
