Barrhead RCMP commander Sgt. Bob Dodds had some good and bad news for Woodlands County councillors during his regular quarterly report to council on Feb. 21 in Fort Assiniboine.
The good news is crime statistics are on the downward trend, but the bad news is that he suspects they will rise again.
“I would attribute our stats being down, to the number of guys about 10 to 12 of our more prolific offenders, who are in jail,” he said, adding as a result the number of property and person crimes being reported are below the five-year average.
In 2016, the number of person crimes Barrhead members responded to decreased to 98 from 128.
Property crimes saw a similar decrease down to 606 in 2016, from 706 in 2015.
Unfortunately, Dodds said some of these offenders will be released in the near future and when they are he suspects numbers will increase.
“If we are able to identify who the most prolific offenders are and stay on top of them, hopefully we can continue to see the numbers decrease,” he said, giving the example of an individual in Fort Assiniboine who is currently out of custody on conditions. “We are out here three or four times a week, knocking on her door at odd times of the day to make sure she is in compliance.”
Dodds noted while the overall crime statistics are down, they still responded to 2,958 complaints — six per cent of which were in Woodlands County.
The Top 10 complaints were motor vehicle collisions, suspicious occurrences, false alarms, theft under $5,000, 911 hang-up calls, moving traffic violations, mischief, breach of peace, abandoned automobiles and vehicle theft.
“So out of our Top 10 complaints we regularly deal with, seven are not criminal matters,” he said.
Barrhead RCMP’s clearance rate for person crimes is 85 per cent, compared to 17 per cent on property crimes.
“The major reason for the difference is because person crimes are easier to solve,” Dodds said. “That is because, generally speaking, you know who punched you in the nose, but if we ask you who took your stuff, the answer isn’t as clear.”
Overall, the detachment’s clearance rate is 39 per cent, compared to the provincial average of 47 per cent.
Although Dodds said the Barrhead detachment polices a rural area, they have to deal with many of the same issues urban police do — most notably drugs.
In recent years, the drug of choice has been crystal meth, but fentanyl is becoming more of an issue.
“Over the last 18 months we have seen two fatalities because of this drug and we have seen a lot of overdoses, where people have been able to pull through mainly because of the efforts of EMS and the hospitals being able to get on top of it and give them Narcan (naloxone),” he said. Naloxone is a drug that can temporarily reverse a fentanyl overdose.
Barrhead RCMP members have been issued a dose of naloxone.
“Basically it was issued to us for our own use, but if need be we could use it to help someone else,” Dodds said, adding an even more potent and dangerous fentanyl derivative, called carfentanil, is now on the illicit drug market. “A member (RCMP) in Yellowknife was responding to a call to a known drug house, when he got lightheaded and collapsed. He had to be given three doses of Narcan to bring him back and they figure he just got a bit of carfentanil on his skin.”
As part of the same report, Dodds told council he basically plans to stay the course. For the last two years, the detachment’s APP has been focused on three main areas — visibilty, drugs and traffic violations.
“The public always want to see us more and we are continuously working on improving our public presence and we always want to keep our thumb on the drug situation as it is the root of a lot of our other crime, but I would like to see us do more on impaired driving and speeding enforcement,” Dodds said.
Whitecourt Central Coun. Ron Govenlock said while he agreed with being more visible and combating drugs, he questioned whether focusing more on speed enforcement is the right use of resources.
“On what basis are you wanting to go forward with that?” he asked. “For me fentanyl and the criminal matters are No. 1, but speed, I’m not sold on it.”
Dodds said vehicle collisions in residential and business areas aren’t the problem, but on the highway with wildlife.
On an annual basis in the detachment’s coverage there are about 400 collisions with wildlife, the majority being deer or moose.
“That’s a lot of animals and so far we have been lucky that no one has been seriously hurt, but if things continue the way they are, it’s only a matter of time,” he said. “If we can get that highway speed down, there is more reaction time when you see the animal and if you can’t avoid it, the damage is less if you are traveling the posted speed limit.”
