North Bay’s next police chief will be Scott Tod.

The city’s police services board voted unanimously to support the current deputy chief’s promotion.

Tod (pictured above) says he’s honoured to be nominated and says it’s a privilege to serve the residents of North Bay and Callander.

“You have an outstanding reputation as an excellent police service and I would just like to make sure that under my time here as chief that I can continue that role and make the North Bay Police Service one of the finest police services in the province,” he says.

One challenge ahead is the modernization of technology.

“The ability for 9-1-1 systems to take in all different type of data, whether it be video images, text messages, social media messaging, the ability for that to be coming into the service and us to respond to it is challenging, not only for us but for fire and ambulance,” Tod says.

Board chair Dennis O’Connor says Tod, who was previously deputy commissioner of the OPP, was a natural choice.

“He has the background to take over most police jobs in Ontario and we’re just blessed that he was in our building, and it wasn’t too hard for the board to unanimously come to the conclusion that he would be our next chief of police,” O’Connor says.

Tod will take over for Chief Shawn Devine (pictured below), who will retire around the end of June and become Executive Director of the Ontario Police Technology Information Co-Operative.

Devine says there’s a host of highlights from his 31 years of policing.

“A month of policing in Sussex, England, I went to Florida, to Disneyworld with the work that I did with the Heritage Festival and Airshow, I worked with the RCMP for two years. I’m going to miss the people,” he says.

An internal and external search will be undertaken to find the next deputy police chief.

Filed under: north-bay-police-service