Marshals Service Superintendent Jesse Barlow. (Nick Nielsen/paNOW Staff)

By Nick Nielsen

Two months into the Saskatchewan Marshals Service

Jul 21, 2025 | 9:52 AM

It’s been two months since the first nine Marshals of the Saskatchewan Marshals Service were sworn in here in Saskatchewan, and while they are based out of Prince Albert, they’ve been active around the province.

You may have seen them helping with police investigations, neglected animal seizures, and security at events like Country Thunder Craven and the World Softball Cup in Prince Albert. But still there are some in the province wondering what exactly is the difference between the Marshals Service and the other police forces in the province.

Jesse Barlow spent 20 years with the Prince Albert Police Service where he worked as a watch commander and staff sergeant, before leaving to become the Marshals Service superintendent. He explained the main difference between the Marshals Service and other police forces within the province is that the other police forces are ‘the police of jurisdiction’, whereas the service is ‘police with jurisdiction’.

That means your city police or local RCMP are the ones who will receive the call to action from 911 in an emergency, but they could call in the Marshals to help assist.

“For instance, if it’s an investigation that the municipal service sees that is going to take a lot of time and maybe take some effort to get to the results that they need, sometimes those members don’t have that opportunity to do that. Maybe it’s held on patrol where they’re responding to calls for service all the time. So we’ve actually been provided a few investigations since our inception and our operations started that have taken a lot of time and effort to investigate, so to have that off of the patrol members in the area is so beneficial because then they can focus on that call response. They can focus on some of their other investigations and we’re there. We can put in the time because we don’t have to constantly run from call to call to call. We can actually kind of pitch in and see that investigation through.”

Landfill decommissioning

Landfill decommissioning work continues in Melfort

Jul 24, 2025

PUBLIC SAFETY

RCMP report shows violent crime spike in Sask.; premier vows action on drugs, bail reform

Jul 23, 2025

Senior Golf Championships

Local golfers in hunt to defend titles at Senior Championships

Jul 23, 2025

That ‘call response’ is an important term in understanding the role of the Marshals Service. Other police forces are required to respond to any and all calls they receive, and also keep someone at the station ready in case another call comes in while officers are out. That can have a negative effect on long term investigations when a police officer is digging into the details of a long term investigation but is continually being called out into the field on other matters.

As for the Marshals Service, they aren’t required to appear at every call, so when one of their officers is given the information on an investigation, they can narrow their focus to that investigation and nothing else without the threat of being pulled away to other action.

“We’re compiling warrant apprehension lists and we’re in discussions with community corrections with electronic monitoring, and we’re looking at helping them out to do compliance checks and things like that. So we’ve executed a number of warrants as well with people that are those high risk offenders in the community, and we’ve been able to do that in Prince Albert as well. So yeah, we’re we’re kind of a Jack of all trades right now and as we get bigger and as we roll out further into the year, we’re going to obviously have a focus on more recruitment.”

While based out of Prince Albert, the Marshals Service has been doing work all over the province in helping police conduct investigations.

“We’re definitely in conversations with Prince Albert Police Service,. Like I said, RCMP all over the province, but also down with Regina Police Service, Saskatoon Police Service Estevan Police Service, we’re looking at potentially partnering with them in the next couple months to do to do some proactive work down there as well. So even though we’re located in Prince Albert, we’re trying our best to kind of establish those relationships through the province, so that when we have more Marshals that’s in that relationship already.”

Right now the Marshals Service has only a single holding cell if they make an arrest here in Prince Albert. As a result, they have an agreement with both the city police and the RCMP: if the Marshals make an arrest in city limits, then that suspect would be held by the Prince Albert Police. If they arrest someone outside of city limits, they would then be held by the RCMP.

Having that working relationship with the other local police detachments is key to the Marshals Service’s success according to Barlow.

“It has been very positive and every location is a little bit different on what they need help with, and so we have to really tailor our response to each individual agency and be flexible on what they need.”

When it comes to recruitment, the Marshals Service is looking for officers of all kinds of experience levels. With their headquarters in Prince Albert, a second regional headquarters has been announced for the Battlefords.

“We’re looking for both experienced members, so constables or sergeants from other services that are either looking to retire or change of scenery. We’re also looking at people that have had kind of a partial training like highway patrol officers that have gone through police college, but have never had their field training or been exposed to what policing is about in terms of Criminal Code and things.”

The Marshals Service doesn’t have a number on arrests that they can report yet, but they have been making arrests for outside agency warrants.