While the Alberta Crime Strategy appears to be making a difference province-wide, locally it has been a very busy summer for the local RCMP Detachment.
On September 4, the Alberta RCMP released a report card on crime reduction. It indicated forward steps have been taken, it says there were 648 fewer multivehicle thefts, 366 fewer break and enters and 3,358 fewer thefts compared to last year. This is a nine per cent decrease compared to January - July of 2017.
Despite this, Drumheller RCMP constable Rachel Pergunas told The Mail it has been a very busy summer, and the majority has been property offenses.
“We’re not necessarily seeing that, but that report would cover a pretty wide area in Alberta, and hopefully, that is the case,” said Pergunas. “We are seeing a fair bit of it through the summer… and we have laid a lot of charges in relation to those property offenses.”
Pergunas said in Drumheller they are seeing a lot of repeat offenses, and they are familiar with the culprits. While there is still often out of town people coming to the community to commit crimes, often there is a connection.
“Usually people who are doing that, we are determining they do have some sort of connection to the community. They are not necessarily picking Drumheller randomly. A few times we have been able to link those offenders to the community or they have some sort of connection to somebody else here,” she said.
“We have a pretty good finger on the pulse locally where stuff is going on, but there is a big difference between knowing who is doing something and having the evidence required to lay a charge and going through the court process. And that is frustrating for us,” Pergunas said.
She is glad to hear overall there has been a decrease and adds as summer passes they expect to see a slow down in incidences.
“I don’t want to say it is rampant anymore. I feel like we are getting a handle on it. It is going to be an issue and of course, with social media it is so much more widely publicized when something gets taken,” she said.
“We do find it gets reported on quite heavily when the numbers are not as bad as they seem.”
Sometimes awareness does help and she encourages victims of crime to continue to come forward.
“We really appreciate when the community is calling us and saying, ‘there is a vehicle here and it is suspicious,’” she said as an example. “I know people think we are too busy for them to call something in, but we want that. You never know when one astute citizen is going to call something in that connects a whole bunch of dots.”
She says there are resources being developed throughout the province that has already been useful.
“There is a new Crime Reduction Unit that is available to us out of the district office in Airdrie. If we do have prolific offenders, or constant issues in certain areas, we can request their assistance and it gives us some bodies to put a focus on where the issue happens to be,” she said.
This has already been utilized by the local detachment on a couple of investigations.
According to a release, in collaboration with the Government of Alberta and backed by provincial investments of $8 million and $5.3 million announced last March, RCMP developed a 7-point action plan that expanded its Crime Reduction Strategy by enhancing intelligence and information sharing, dedicating resources to apprehend repeat offenders and reducing administrative burdens of officers, to allow them to spend more time conducting investigations and engaging with the communities they serve.
