The Olds Rural Crime Watch Association – which covers all of Mountain View County – is looking for new individual, business and corporate members, says president Gerald Ingeveld.
“We'd like to have every rural family in Mountain View County signed up if we could,” said Ingeveld. “The better we cover the county and get the eyes and ears out there, the better we are going to do. One membership covers the whole family for five years.”
The association currently has 200 individual members and two corporate members.
Although there hasn't been a decline in membership, officials are hoping to add more to the list, he said.
Association members have a number of roles to play in the fight against crime, including reporting unusual or suspicious vehicles or occurrences, responding to RCMP fan-out messages, making an inventory of their property and marking valuables, posting rural crime watch signs, and attending information meetings.
Asked if officials are seeing any particular crime trends in the area, Ingeveld said, “It comes and goes. In the summer it is all small thefts with people coming into shops and rural residences and helping themselves.
There have been a number of recent vehicle thefts in the area, he said.
“We want to remind people to pull their keys,” he said. “Most of these guys can steal a vehicle if it has no keys in it. A lot of folks are parking the truck and leaving the keys in it.”
Asked what kind of criminals are surfacing in the district, he said, “We are getting more of a provincewide thing where a group of three or four folks will hit a small town and pick up anything that is sitting still and them move on to the next town.”
The three RCMP detachments in the area support the association, as does Mountain View County, he said.
“We are also partners with Fish and Wildlife, as one of our sponsor organizations, so we are keeping our eyes open for people who are poaching.”
The association recently issued the following statement from a provincial RCMP staff sergeant:
“The security of rural communities has traditionally been the tight relationships between neighbours and the recognition of strangers in the area. Rural crime watch formalizes this relationship and gets neighbours talking about things happening around them. Being aware is a huge contribution to personal and community security.”
Anyone interested in become a member can find application information at www.oldsruralcrimewatch.ca.
"We'd like to have every rural family in Mountain View County signed up if we could."Gerald Ingeveld, association president
