| S.T.O.P. - About S.T.O.P. |
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Snowmobile Trail Officer Patrol (S.T.O.P.) is a partnership between the Ontario Provincial Police and the Ontario Federation of Snowmobile Clubs. This community based enforcement program uses the assistance of Special Constables to better the sport of snowmobiling. The goals of the S.T.O.P. program are to;
They also assist police in sobriety enforcement. For MSVA enforcement purposes, S.T.O.P. Officers have the same authority as police officers. This authority comes from the Police Services Act and is granted by the government. This gives a S.T.O.P. Officer special powers for the Province of Ontario only to enforce the Motorized Snow Vehicles Act (M.S.V.A.) only for a set period of time. The power to write tickets comes from the Provincial Offences Act Section 1(3) and the designation of Special Constables is signed by the Solicitor General. This permits the Commissioner of the O.P.P. to appoint the S.T.O.P. Officers as Special Constables. The O.P.P. Provincial Coordinator holds the signed designation in Orillia empowering the S.T.O.P. Officers to be appointed as Special Constables to enforce the M.S.V.A. Therefore under the M.S.V.A. a S.T.O.P. Officer can carry out the same duties as a Police Officer by definition (Sec. 53 (3) Police Services Act) and may even make an arrest under Sec. 16(5) of the M.S.V.A. The History Sixty (60) snowmobiles were sold in North America in 1960. Today there are over 300,000 registered snowmobiles in the Province of Ontario. A recent economic study showed that this sport contributed 1.2 billion over $900 million dollars to the Ontario economy and $3.6 billion nationally in 2005. Unfortunately, the rising popularity of snowmobiling has also resulted in increased fatal and serious injury accidents. Law enforcement agencies and snowmobile organizations are both being challenged to address this situation. This is the story of how one area took a new approach and made a difference. The Task Force While the Trail Wardens and police were taking immediate steps to curb the drinking and riding problems, the local politicians were also responding to the events of the recent weeks. At a meeting of regional mayors, the issue of snowmobile safety came up. Mayors Terry Kett of Walden and Jean-Guy Quesnel of Onaping Falls joined the group of stakeholders who had met at the O.P.P. station and the Mayors and Citizens Task Forceon Snowmobiling was formed.Locally elected Members of Provincial Parliament and Mayor Kett kept up the pressure on Queen's Park, while Sgt. Beach began a campaign of calling the Solicitor General's policy and planning group on a regular basis to make sure things were not forgotten.Finally, in the fall of 1992, the Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services approved the implementation of a three year pilot project in Sudbury to assess the feasibility of volunteer snowmobile enforcement, which became known as the Snowmobile Trail Officer Patrol or S.T.O.P. program.
Education was reviewed and a new snowmobile bylaw was developed and enacted for all seven municipalities in the region with the support of both police and snowmobile clubs The landmark project, however, started in the spring of 1992 when one of the snowmobile representatives, Norm Hein of the Sudbury Trail Plan, submitted a proposal outlining how the province could appoint volunteers as Special Constables and Provincial Offenses Officers. The clubs and police both accepted this concept and started working together to lobby the Ontario Government to make it a reality. By the start of the 1994/1995 season, a significant reduction in the injury and fatal statistics was observed in the Sudbury area, compared to the period prior to the pilot project. In February, 1995, the Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services announced that the S.T.O.P. pilot project was a success and that S.T.O.P. would now become a permanent program, expanding gradually across the province. The program would be run as a partnership, managed provincially by the Ontario Federation of Snowmobile Clubs and the Ontario Provincial Police Traffic and Marine Safety Bureau. The Expansion Following the announcement of the expansion, the O.P.P. appointed Traffic S/Sgt. Ron Roy as the O.P.P. Provincial S.T.O.P. Coordinator, while the OFSC named Sp/Cst. Jim Robinson to the corresponding post. The Coordinators then began looking for new sites to establish the program. After meetings with clubs and police, Thunder Bay / Nipigon, North Bay and Timmins were approved as the new S.T.O.P. Areas for the fall of 1995. The program continued to grow over the years, and the present status can be seen on the About Stop portion of this website. September 1995 saw the signing of a Protocol Agreement between the OFSC and O.P.P. laying out the terms of the partnership. Early in the expansion phase, S.T.O.P. Sp/Cst. Norm Hein and O.P.P. Sr/Cst. Shawn Rae of the Sudbury Area, both instrumental in the implementation of the pilot project, began working with the O.P.P. Academy to develop a formal Course Training Standard (CTS) for the new officers. The CTS manuals were approved and continue to form the basis for S.T.O.P. officer training across the province today. In the summer of 1996, Jim Robinson approached the OFSC Board of Governors, requesting that funding for the program be provided by the OFSC provincially. The original plan was for the clubs in each area to bear the cost of the program. Robinson based his arguments on the premise that centralized funding would ensure consistency and enable new site selections based on interest and need rather than financial ability. The Board approved this proposal. At the end of 1996, Ron Roy elected to retire from the O.P.P. after a long and distinguished career. On January 1, 1997, Traffic Sgt. Lynn Beach, who had called the first meeting almost five years before, returned to the program as O.P.P. Provincial S.T.O.P. Coordinator. The Results From the beginning, the S.T.O.P. program had a marked impact on snowmobile safety. In a report issued in September 1995, Drs. Brian Rowe and Gary Bota reviewed trauma incidence in the Sudbury Area before and after the S.T.O.P. program. In the three years prior to the program, 15 sledders died. Thirteen of these were alcohol involved. In the next three year period, with active sobriety spot checks throughout the area, only four were killed. In only two of these incidents was alcohol a factor. Further, there was a substantial reduction in both hospital admissions and the injury severity of those admitted. The doctors concluded that S.T.O.P. was effective in reducing snowmobile deaths and injuries, and supported its expansion throughout the province. Because S.T.O.P. officers are snowmobilers and not police officers, their mandate is to improve the sport rather than enforce the law. They must walk a fine line between providing enough regulation to deal with problems, but not so much that they take the fun out of the sport. S.T.O.P. is now heralded as a classic example of community policing. Snowmobilers are a community that has a problem. Rather than rely exclusively on police officers to deal with it, they have chosen to participate fully in the solution.
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