Barrhead’s top cop had some good news on April 9 for Town of Barrhead councillors: while it isn’t dropping by leaps and bound, the crime rate is on the downward trend.
At least that is according to the latest statistics compiled by RCMP ‘K’ Division which counted up the files that the Barrhead detachment responded to in the first three months of the year all the way from 2014 to 2018.
First, there has a general downward trend in “person crimes” such as robbery, assault, kidnapping, extortion, criminal harassment, uttering threats and various sexual offences.
Overall, the Barrhead RCMP have responded to 40 person crimes complaints in the first quarter of 2019. That is the second lowest in six years and a 2.5 per cent drop off the six-year average.
The lowest was in 2017 with 38 complaints while the highest being 2015 with 60 complaints recorded.
The category with the highest number of files was assault with 19, followed by criminal threats at 10 and uttering threats at seven.
On the property crime side, unfortunately, the stats aren’t quite as good. Although the total number of property crimes for the first quarter has dropped by six per cent over last year, falling from 137 to 129, the number of property crimes complaints received thus far is 4.4 per cent above the six-year average.
The lowest was in 2014 with 89 property crimes reported and the highest was in 2015 with 139 recorded.
The category with the highest number of complaints was theft under $5,000, followed by mischief to property at 25. Break and enters were next at 17, followed by possession of stolen goods (10), fraud (10), motor vehicle theft (9), arson (3) and theft over $5,000 (2).
For the most part, Dodds said other detachments across the province are seeing similar decreases in the crime rate over last year, as well as decreases in the six-year averages for most categories.
Dodds attributes a lot of that to the introduction of Crime Reduction Units (CRU).
In March 2018, the province gave the RCMP $10 million to hire 39 officers, as well as 40 civilian members and 10 Crown prosecutors. These resources would be used to form CRUs - mobile units whose primary function is to help reduce crime in rural areas.
“They are basically travelling road shows, and what you get with them are six to eight enthusiastic, experienced constables that roll into a community for ours for a couple of days,” Dodds said.
“We ... hand them a list of all the people we have out on warrants. All of a sudden, many of our high-fliers are out of our communities and off to remand, and you see the effects with our persons and property crimes going down.”
A good example of this, he said, is the number of break and enters they responded to in the first quarter this year. The number stands at 17, wich is a 37 per cent decrease from last year at the same time.
“Property crime is often committed by (a group of the same) individuals, and having a lot them off the street with the help of CRU, plus our colder than normal February, made a real impact on the numbers,” he said.
Another category he is pleased to see go down is the number of stolen vehicles, which are down to nine from an all-time high last year of 21.
“The theft of a vehicle is one of our biggest concerns because they are probably being driven by someone high on meth that isn’t going to stop for police, and who are not concerned about anybody’s safety,” Dodds said, adding it would also be the easiest crime to prevent if people wouldn’t keep leaving their keys in their vehicle.
One statistic he is pleased to see an increase in is the number of suspicious person/vehicle reports at 60, a more than 300 per cent increase from six years ago.
“If something doesn’t look right, that it doesn’t belong, call us. I’ve always said that if you call us, we might get there and stop that person and we might not, but if you don’t call us, it is a certainty that we won’t,” Dodds said, crediting much of the increase to the Barrhead and Area Regional Crime Coalition’s (BARCC) alert system.
BARCC is a partnership between Woodlands County, the Town of Barrhead and the County of Barrhead, as well as the Barrhead RCMP and Rural Crime Watch.
Dodds also said another area that is going up is the number of Mental Health Act related files that RCMP must deal with. The number has doubled over the last two years.
“It’s a labour intensive file for us,” he said. “If we arrest someone under the act, we have to take them to a designated facility in Edmonton, which potentially means (we have) lost two members for a good portion of their shift.”
Mayor Dave McKenzie asked if Alberta Health Services or the Alberta Sheriffs branch provided any transportation to a person deemed a mental health risk. Dodds said no, adding it is getting more difficult to arrange for a Sheriff’s member to transport a prisoner.
Coun. Leslie Penny asked who makes the diagnosis if a person arrested is someone that needs to be evaluated under the Mental Health Act.
“There is no professional diagnosis, it is done by the member,” he said. “If I attend a residence that someone’s threatening suicide or is seeing little green men, then it is deemed to be under the Mental Health Act.”
Coun. Ty Assaf asked what the legalization of marijuana has meant for the detachment.
Dodds indicated that in the first quarter of 2019, the detachment laid four charges under the Cannabis Act. He said most of the charges under the act will be similar to alcohol, where people are stopped for a traffic violation and they are found to be either under the influence of the drug or have it within reach.
“We are not seeing rampant abuse of the new provisions, such as drug-impaired driving, but that being said, I don’t think we are sufficiently trained to police it fully. It is something we will get better at as time goes on,” Dodds said, noting a road-side screening device is still a ways off.
Coun. Dausen Kluin asked how often the CRUs came to the community and if they were available if a need arose.
“Every district has a CRU and our district [Eastern] has between 24 to 27 detachments so under a normal rotation they would come to our community every three to four months. But if we really needed a someone, they can be made available,” he said.
For example, back in November, the RCMP asked for an interrogation expert after two individuals were arrested in a residence across from the high school after a multi-hour standoff.
“If there is something big, there are a number of units we can draw from: the Emergency Response Team, Police Dog Services, drug experts from the city and Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team, among others.”
