SUNDRE — Throughout July, local Mounties responded to roughly double the average number of calls for service, nearly half of which pertained to property crimes.
“In the last 30 days, we have had 300 calls for service,” Sgt. Trent Sperlie, the Sundre RCMP detachment’s commander, said in early August referring to a case analysis dating to July 1.
Asked approximately what the average number of monthly calls for service usually would be, Sperlie estimated about half of that.
The remaining calls for service stem from complaints such as domestic disturbances that include verbal altercations with some instances that can escalate to damaged property or even physical assault, as well as mischief and drunk and rowdy behaviour including physical confrontations, he said, adding domestic issues do not appear to have increased.
But of the 300 calls for service logged in July, he said a substantial bulk of those complaints represented some kind of property crime — in this instance largely stolen vehicles as well as thefts from oil and gas lease sites.
“And then we’ve had a fair bit of theft from in town like vehicle shopping, where they’re rooting through vehicles and stealing valuables from inside the vehicle,” he said. “Primarily, it’s been stolen vehicles, flight from police officer in stolen vehicles, and copper theft that have been the big ones.”
The sergeant did not speculate as to what factors might be fuelling the recent property crime spike.
“Honestly, I don’t have anything specific to attribute it to,” he said.
However, he added that police “have a fairly good idea of the players involved.”
More often than not, he said property crimes tend to be committed by a small, core group of individuals. Additionally, organized groups from outside Sundre’s detachment area seem to be exerting a level of influence in that property crime spike, he said.
“It’s associations of our known criminal element here, with the known criminal element outside of our detachment area, which isn’t uncommon,” he said. “But there’s an unusually strong influence in that during this past month.”
Brazen thieves steal back seized vehicles
The sergeant said officers had recently located several of the stolen vehicles, which were all seized and locally impounded.
“And within 24 hours, likely the same people went to the impound and stole two of them back,” he said.
Among some of the other issues Mounties must contend with are suspects in stolen vehicles who recklessly flee in a bid to evade police, he said.
There have been instances when Mounties identify a vehicle reported as stolen from either the detachment’s area or another region “and as soon as they tried to stop it, the vehicle flees. So, we’ve had four of those this month.”
Weighing out risk to public safety
The general public’s safety and an innocent bystander’s well-being are considered by RCMP far more important than replaceable property such as a stolen vehicle.
So depending on the circumstances, it is not uncommon for Mounties to abandon a pursuit that could potentially place people in peril.
“You have to understand that these people we’re dealing with in these crimes, they are very typically involved in drug abuse, substance abuse of some sort,” Sperlie told the Albertan. “They are extremely erratic and their driving behaviour – when they see police or when police try to stop them – becomes something that is so dangerous on the road for other people. You have to weigh out the risk to the public.”
Placing limbs and lives in peril over stolen property is not a gamble police are typically prepared to make.
“When it comes down to a stolen vehicle, the risk of somebody’s safety is by far greater than that stolen vehicle,” he said.
The last outcome police want, is for a member to engage a suspected vehicle thief in a pursuit that ends up triggering an already-erratic individual who “does not care about anybody else’s safety” into desperately driving dangerously in a bid to evade officers that results in a person or child being struck and grievously injured or even possibly killed, he said.
“That kind of puts it in perspective,” he said. “The members can’t control everything that’s going on around them when those pursuits are going on.”
And police chases can unfold so fast that people in the area, whether residents out for a stroll on a sidewalk or even other drivers on the road, simply don’t have an opportunity to be warned in advance.
“There’s just no time to prepare for that and for the public to prepare for that to get out of the way,” he said. “It just creates such a risk to the public that’s not worth it.”
Assistance from eyes in the skies
Of course that all being said, Mounties also nevertheless remain committed to pursuing and catching criminals.
“So the public knows, just because we terminate a pursuit on a stolen vehicle, it doesn’t mean that we’re not doing something else to try to maintain surveillance on that vehicle,” he said, citing for example aerial units from RCMP Air Services as well as the Calgary Police Service’s Helicopter Air Watch for Community Safety (HAWCS) as providing crucial eyes in the sky that can track a suspect vehicle until it comes to a stop at a location that officers on the ground can then be directed to without increasing the risk to innocent bystanders on the ground.
“Air services, we use quite a bit,” he said. “We do bring in resources immediately to try to pursue without actually causing danger on the road and get these guys.”
Arrests made and charges laid
If there is a silver lining, it is that police “have a pretty good idea who the groups of people” are committing these crimes, enabling officers to pursue preventative policing approaches through, for example, habitual offender programs.
In other words, as opposed to reactively running from one crime scene to another, police are attempting to more proactively keep a closer eye on the handful of perpetrators who regularly re-offend to “get them for the things that we can prove – that we can detect safely – and deal with it in that manner.”
There seems to have been a level of measured success with that strategy.
“Just over the past month, we’ve laid approximately 30 criminal charges,” said the sergeant, adding that would for the most part involve individuals that police know continue to commit criminal offences.
Recognizing that organized crime groups operate across individual RCMP detachment jurisdictions, police must also work alongside their counterparts who serve other communities.
“We have to have that inter-detachment and inter-agency collaboration to work on these people,” he said. “Because they don’t just live in our detachment area.”
Yet despite the recent spike in property crime, the sergeant said the trend is unlikely to indefinitely continue increasing.
“It will go down again,” he said. “It fluctuates.”
