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“It’s all about giving choice, and that’s what makes this policy a lot more inclusive,” said Guthrie, OUTSaskatoon’s education and operations manager.

As a group, members of OUTSaskatoon, the police force and people from the community looked at other Canadian police services’ policies.

Under previous policy, male officers would conduct searches on males and female officers would search females. The group was concerned that policy wasn’t as inclusive as it could be for non-binary or genderqueer people, those who don’t identify exclusively with one gender or another, and people who are transgender.

“The place we ended up on, I feel, is one that, at least given the circumstances, one has choice, and I think oftentimes for a person to feel respected and included in a space, oftentimes what that depends on is having the ability to have choice. This policy gives them that,” Guthrie said.

The work to reach out to members of the LGBT community was moved forward several years ago by Const. Matt Maloney and has continued with the police service’s cultural relations unit. Const. Derek Chesney, who has worked in the unit for four years, said one of the goals is inclusivity: Police want everyone to feel accepted, welcome, safe and able to be open when something happens in the community.

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When someone is booked into detention at the police station, they are asked about pronouns, and if an officer sees a different name on the person’s driver’s licence, staff ask the person for the name they prefer to go by, he said.