S/Sgt. Carl Dinsdale, Meadow Lake Detachment commander and John Mirasty of Flying Dust First Nation participated in this year's Jail and Bail. (Kelly Loken Photo)

By Julia Lovett-Squires

Jail and Bail

‘Get out of the Klink’: Meadow Lake Jail N Bail raises over $7K

Dec 7, 2024 | 10:12 AM

Jailbirds united in Meadow Lake earlier this week for the Royal Canadian Legion and Door of Hope.

“We’re extremely happy,” said Jo-Anne Carter, Legion president.

“We were shocked, we’re amazing and we’re very grateful.”

The Jail N Bail event was held last Wed., Dec. 4 and according to organizer Kelly Loken, the team is still counting the donations but expected over $7,000 has been raised. She explained that had planned to host the event earlier this year but had to move it to December.

“We didn’t have a lot of time to plan it, we knew it was going to be a push, a lot of it was social media, word of mouth, organization, interagency, emails, little flyers that were posted around town,” she said,

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This year, over dozens of participants from various communities including Loon Lake, Flying Dust First Nation, Waterhen Lake First Nation came to join in the fun and donations rolled in from as far away as Saskatoon.

“The message was out there, people were posting on their Facebooks while they were in jail asking their friends to help them raise their bail,” she said of the laughter and videos being created.

“We had some people really play it up and that’s where our success was is people got into their role and they wanted to help.”

To get things started, businesses and offices were given a 48-hour head’s up that police would be dropping in. Participants either turned themselves in to the legion where the event was held, or local RCMP made mock arrests.

In one situation, a woman who was the only employee at her workplace office had a warrant out on her – only she couldn’t leave. A community safety officer from Flying Dust made a mock arrest, handed her an orange shirt, took a photo and she went straight to Facebook.

“[She] said. ‘Hey, I’m being arrested, help bail me out because I need to stay at work and people kind of just pledged and sent her money and that was her bail,” Loken said.

For those who were arrested, they got the full experience: handcuffs, a ride in the back of the cruiser, wear a “pretty orange shirt,” and attend their bail hearing.

“They came in, they sat in front of a judge, verified their name, verified their charge, they got to say if they thought it was justified or not, they got to try and talk their way out of it.”

Everyone got into the spirit of the event, and some went above and beyond the call. In a few cases there was bribery while others in the gallery tried to get the accused longer stays behind the little bars of a wooden cell.

“We had one circumstance where there was a S’Mores kit given to the judge so that she could try S’Mores, it was quite creative.”

While the jailbirds sat behind bars making calls, sending emails and posting online for pledges, one woman asked the officers what $20 would get to keep her husband longer.

According to S/Sgt., Carl Dinsdale, commander for Meadow Lake RCMP, during the pandemic, small communities wreaked havoc on morale and this event did a lot to help community spirit.

One of the things the detachment members noticed were the connections that were made between participants. While they waited to be released on bail – one of whom raised his bail in record time, bragged about it and was thrown back in on a charge of being sassy – they networked with each other.

Dinsdale said the that kind of spirit did a lot to boost everyone’s mood.

“These are tough times everywhere so every community needs these types of events to help out where we can and give a hand up to people who might need it more than others,” he said.

“It was fun to go out and affect an arrest – I got to arrest the Mayor of Meadow Lake (Merlin Seymour) – gleefully to his wife’s joy,” he added.

Dinsdale said what impressed him about the day was that people in the community took time away from their busy lives and businesses to support a community event. Once all the donations are received, they will be divided equally between the organizations.

BattlefordsNOW has reached out to Delton Sylvain, executive director for Meadow Lake Outreach Ministries for comment but he is unavailable at this time.

“My hat’s off to those people that are willing to do that and step up.”

The commander said he himself felt a bit guilty as he couldn’t stay for the entire event .

“I threw some money into the kitty for bail for some of the participants to help them raise what they needed to get out of the Klink.”

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julia.lovettsquires@pattisonmedia.com

On BlueSky: juleslovett@bsky.social