There has been an increase in property crime in the community this year, but overall, crime has been down, according to Sundre RCMP Cpl. Ryan Hodge.
“Overall our crime is down. The only area that went up significantly was property crime and that's directly tied to one evening where we had 30 vehicles broken into and items stolen,” said Hodge, in a presentation to Town of Sundre council during the Aug. 6 council meeting.
Hodge discussed with council how this year's policing objectives were being met.
“Our first objective was to reduce oilfield and industry related thefts and property crimes. Last year we had a large number of these types of crimes out in the rural area that we police,” he said.
One of the ways to reduce these crimes was to increase patrols in the rural area, he said.
“I set a goal for each of my members, for one patrol a week, to be out in our area where we have forestry or we have gas,” he said. “So far it's been very well received by the public and by the industry and we haven't had our problems that we had last year.”
The other solution was to create a network with Sundre Petroleum Operators Group (SPOG), where if RCMP members have a problem they can contact SPOG officials, who will fan out the information to all partners in the industry.
“This is so that everyone is on the same page and we're all looking for similar vehicles or similar kinds of property crimes. With the hopes that instead of having one set of police eyes out there, now we have every operator, every field operator, everybody in the industry is out there looking and helping us solve this problem,” he explained.
Another initiative has been to maintain positive relationships and interactions with youth and children in the community.
“Every member is expected to make an effort to go out and stop by the skate park, stop by the arena, go to the schools during the school year and just be present,” he said. “Talk to the kids and show that we're people and that we can be easily approached.”
He said this initiative has been working really well and that it's something RCMP officers will continue to work on.
“I've been getting phone calls from parents saying they're happy and their kids come home from the skate park and they say ‘hey the police stopped by tonight and they chatted with us and everything was good',” he said.
Another initiative RCMP members are working on is increasing speeding enforcement in Sundre and the surrounding area.
“We have a goal set for this year to write 300 speeding tickets for our detachment,” he said. “I think we're going to easily attain that.”
The goals were set back in June as RCMP members were busy with the flood in town, however, everything is back on track now, he said.
“We're seeing, especially in town, slower speeds. I was out the other morning from about 5 a.m. till 8 a.m. and traffic in town has definitely slowed down. So that's a good sign for us,” he said.
RCMP members have also been working on impaired driving enforcement.
“We have set a goal to remove 15 impaired drivers from the roads this year. That's a slight increase from what we had last year,” he said.
“At the end of June, we removed 15 impaired drivers at that time. So we're definitely going to exceed our goal for the year.”
As for calls for service, the numbers have been similar to last year, he said.
