OLDS — Town council will be discussing a committee of the whole recommendation Monday determining its yearly policing priorities for Olds RCMP.
The committee is recommending the following priorities:
1. Crime Reduction with an emphasis on property crime;
2. Community engagement: to be clear, accountable and transparent and to encourage residents to report all crime no matter how minor it may seem;
3. Mental health and violence in relationships: to enhance awareness and education;
4. To promote road safety, visibility and education therof.
That decision was made during council’s March 4 committee of the whole meeting.
Because it was committee of the whole and not a regular council meeting, the decision will come back to an upcoming regular council meeting for ratification.
The decision was a response to a request by Olds RCMP commanding officer Staff Sgt. Warren Wright in a letter to Mayor Judy Dahl.
In that letter, he noted that last year’s town policing priorities were:
1. Crime reduction
2. Community engagement - be clear, accountable and transparent
3. Mental health and violence in relationships - enhance awareness and education
4. Enhance road safety
When the matter came up for discussion, Coun. James Cummings called for a focus on property crime, especially in the Uptowne area.
“Crime reduction is a catch-all. It's an everything; every single thing the police do is crime reduction,” Cummings said.
“Crime reduction is just too broad. We're not giving them any direction. When we say crime reduction, we're just saying ‘go out there and do your job.’
“If we're going to keep it as a priority, it has to be focused on something. I'm pointing out a focus on property crime, because when you look at the statistics, that seems to be a real issue in our town."
Cummings questioned the necessity of focusing on enhancing road safety. He noted that during a recent town council meeting Wright said while officers clamped down on road safety recently, there were very few violations to report.
“I'll say it, because I like to jab at it. Road safety is not statistically an issue in our town, but it always seems on this list.”
Councillors Dan Daley, Wanda Blatz and Darren Wilson said while property crime to businesses is an issue, that type of crime is an issue in other areas of town as well.
“I mean, if you have a property crime done to you at your home, or somewhere -- your vehicle’s vandalized in the parking lot at Walmart, that's still as important to you as any other crime,” Blatz said.
However, Blatz and Town of Olds Mayor Judy Dahl questioned whether Olds RCMP have the resources to focus on any one thing.
Protective services director Justin Andrew agreed that crime reduction is a broad term but pointed out that reducing one kind of crime results in a reduction in property crime as well, because they all tend to be linked.
For example, people steal to obtain things to sell to obtain money for their drug habit.
During council’s Feb. 26 meeting Wright offered to meet with members of the Olds & District chamber of Commerce to discuss property crime to businesses. Andrew said it appears such a meeting is in the works.
Blatz and Coun. Dan Daley raised the idea of encouraging people to report all crimes, no matter how minor they may seem.
Blatz said if people don’t report such crimes, then it’s difficult for RCMP to know where they should focus their energy.
“It's very difficult for them. They have to act when they’re needed, not necessarily for us to say, ‘this is where we want you to focus,’” she said. “I don't know that they have the resources to just focus in on only one thing.
“Yes, crime reduction is perceived as very broad. But it is crime reduction.”
Andrew agreed that whatever Olds RCMP’s priorities may be in theory, they’ll respond to whatever emergency or crime wave occurs “because they're dealing with crime trends that can change on the blink of an eye.”
Coun. Darren Wilson agreed with that statement, as did Deputy Mayor Heather Ryan.
Andrew said crime stats in Olds are very low per population.
“That's a really good problem to have in a community,” he said.
“It makes something like this a little more difficult, because it's not as easy to say that we need to target whatever -- carjackings or murderers or something like that. Heaven forbid that we have to allocate or try to direct the police into reducing those things.
“So, we're really looking at how can we get better as a community with policing to engage our citizens, provide timely response to the things that are seen as a priority.”
He said another part of the problem is that police can go out and arrest suspects, but under the current justice system, they could be back out on the street, able to commit more crimes again relatively quickly.
Cummings agreed that crime occurs in various areas of town but it would be most efficient to focus on one area, due to RCMP’s limited resources. He suggested property crime should be that priority.
Cummings suggested that because road issues are not much of a problem in town that that priority could be changed to a focus on drug crime, because, he said, “drug crime is prevalent in our town. It's the root cause of almost all other crime that we see in our town.”
Andrew agreed with that.
“Property crime usually is related to drug activity, because it's usually found as a funding mechanism. Unfortunately, the two go hand in hand,” he said. “When you start to turn over rocks, you start to find all sorts of things that marry up and then it disperses from there.”
Andrew said it’s his understanding that there is some “built-in time” in the current policing contract that would enable police to focus resources where necessary, especially due to the fact that Olds RCMP have a community resource officer, Const. Mitch Price, whose position is paid for by the town.
However, when the matter came down to a vote, the idea of focusing on drug crime was not specifically listed in the motion.
Blatz and Cummings noted that in his letter, Wright asked for a list of 2024 policing priorities by March 27.
That doesn’t give council members much time to ponder the matter because they only have two council meetings before that deadline.
