THUNDER BAY -- When a bear is in the city, local police are focused mainly on public safety.
When a bear roamed into a Newmarket neighbourhood, the incident made national headlines and raised questions about how police should deal with such calls.
In Northern Ontario, bear calls are much more common than in the GTA and police have a defined protocol of how bear calls are handled.
If a call comes in to the Thunder Bay Police Service about a bear in the city, more often than not the caller will be advised to call the Ministry of Natural Resources. That is, of course, if it's determined that the animal is not a threat.
If it is a threat and on the move, police will try whatever they can from horns to sirens to scare the bear back to where it came from.
If the bear is up a tree for example, the MNR is called in to try and tranquilize the bear and relocate it.
If that bear is aggressive or it police think public safety is threatened in any way, the bear could be killed.
