Regina Police Service announces Farooq Hassan Sheikh as new chief

Regina's board of police commissioners has found the city's next top cop.

The board announced Tuesday that Farooq Hassan Sheikh, who has spent 31 years in law enforcement in the United Kingdom and Canada, will become the 15th chief of the Regina Police Service.

It ends a five-month search to replace the former chief, Evan Bray, who retired last summer.

"When I found out I got the job, I was over the moon," Sheikh told reporters in a virtual scrum Wednesday.

"I just wanted to tell everybody, but I couldn't tell everybody until I got it officially notified."

He starts his new role Dec. 1.

During his career, he has also served in senior leadership roles for the London Metropolitan Police and West Midlands Police in the U.K., the police commissioners board said in a Tuesday news release. He has also served as a member of the Calgary and Central Saanich police services.

Since 2021, Sheikh has led the Alberta Sheriffs Branch, a provincial law enforcement agency whose members are peace officers with some policing duties.

"I missed being a cop," he said. "My goal, as a chief, is to make Regina the safest place and to make the police the best police service."

Regina Mayor Sandra Masters, who sits on the police commissioners board, said on Tuesday that the job was posted nationwide and had dozens of applicants. Five were interviewed, she said.

"We were looking at the competencies like proactive policing, crime reduction, equity, diversity and inclusion, and the mental health and well-being of the force," Masters said. 

She also said the Regina Police Service was looking for someone with both big city and small town policing experience, and she's confident in Sheikh's ability to lead the service.

"He has a real vast array of policing type of experience, and we like that big-city element," Masters said. "RPS are facing more and more dangerous and risky situations. He would have experienced a number of [those]."

Sheikh has also been a lead on integrating services across police agencies and has established mental health programs, and as police chief, he aims to develop relationships with all of Regina's communities, according to Masters.

"He says that's when you go out into synagogues, you go out into temples, you go out into mosques where you meet with folks, you go out to First Nations, and you build those relationships at the ground level and build trust," the mayor said.

Sheikh will try to recruit diverse personnel so people in Regina can see themselves reflected in the police force, said Masters.

The police commissioners board said Sheikh is passionate about crime prevention through proactive policing and employee well-being.

A decade ago, while serving in the U.K., Sheikh earned a master's degree in criminology from Birmingham City University, according to his LinkedIn page.

That education, he said Wednesday, broadened his perspective as a police officer.

"I wanted to link the criminology theory into operational delivery," he said about why he enrolled in the master's program.

"I was a cop and I understood how to catch bad people.

"But with the additional theory was understanding why people commit crime, then linking that into the operational side. [It] made me a better cop in problem-solving and actually tackling crime better."

Sheikh plans to pair his education and experience and lean on local agencies to deal with challenges Regina faces, including mental health and addictions issues.

Police data shows Regina is on pace to see the most overdose deaths this year since at least 2018.

"If we try to tackle it, as the police, alone, we can't do it," Sheikh said.

"Rather than looking at enforcing the law and trying to get people incarcerated, we want to look at the root causes of it."

Regina's Board of Police Commissioners acknowledged Deputy Chief Dean Rae and Deputy Chief Lorilee Davies, who fulfilled the duties of the police chief since July.