Halton’s top cop honoured for being longest-serving police chief in Canada

Halton’s top cop, Chief Stephen Tanner, has become the longest active police chief in Canada and shows no signs of slowing down.

Tanner worked on the tactical team, polygraph, as a detective, and sergeant working on a number of cases that stick with him to this day such as the Paul Bernardo case.

At 38 years old, Tanner became a deputy chief in Guelph. It wasn’t long before he moved north to Belleville where he became the youngest chief in Canada at the age of 41. Six years later, he became Kingston’s top cop. Within months, tragedy rocked the city and the nation, when the bodies of Zainab Shafia, 19, Sahar Shafia, 17, Geeti Shafia, 13, and Rona Amir Mohammad, 58, were found in a submerged car at the Kingston Mills locks.

“We were able to reach out in the Shafia case very quickly to the deputy chief in Montreal who provided surveillance support and technical support which really put some important pieces of evidence into that case to help convict the mother, father and one of the sons in all 4 of those murders,” said Tanner.

Tanner believes the future of policing is going to be a lot more community-oriented.

“Making sure we work with our diverse communities who do feel, and sometimes for very appropriate reasons, that they’ve either been over-served or under-served,” said Tanner.

At 61 years old, and serving Halton police as chief for the past decade, Tanner says he has no plans on hanging up the uniform just yet.

“If you really enjoy and love what you do you never work a day in your life so retirement is not as important.”