Saskatchewan rural crime Prince Albert proactive policing, Digi Mart USA News (Prince Albert, Saskatchewan): Saskatchewan RCMP and the Saskatchewan Marshals Service say they have been pursuing proactive approaches to address rural crime in the Prince Albert area and are now releasing the results.
“We’re hearing from residents about their concerns with rural crime,” said Minister of Community Safety Michael Weger. “Whether it’s theft or break and enters.
And the reality is we have seen an increase, year-over-year from the month of September to October in some of these rural crimes. And so, we need to respond.”
The new proactive policing initiatives come more than one month after an open letter sent Sept. 21 from Garden River Reeve Ryan Scragg to the Ministry of Community Safety. Scragg wrote that the RM of Garden River had an urgent need for increased safety measures.
The letter followed at least eight instances of property crime in just one week in the rural community of 150 homes, including an overnight home invasion.
In late September, Saskatchewan RCMP said it conducted a multi-unit operation that resulted in the execution of 14 arrest warrants and 30 criminal charges. The RCMP Warrant Enforcement and Suppression Team made 17 arrests related to property crime and weapons offences, executed 47 warrants and laid 19 new charges since mid-September in the Prince Albert and Ahtahkakoop jurisdictions.
The Prince Albert RCMP detachment has also been busy responding to crimes in progress, with almost 90 calls for service over the past weekend, beginning Friday evening. District Operations Officer Insp.
Robert Lake said the volume of calls leaves little room to get ahead of the curve. “It’s a busy detachment… It gives us a lack of ability to be proactive and more reactive, and that’s why we lean on these support services, these crime reduction strategies.”
The province is working to put more officers on the ground. Lake said overall interest from candidates is not the main problem; the bottleneck is intake processing.
“We have several recruits that are sitting in the hopper that are waiting, ready to go through the process,” he said. “There are some changes that are taking place with our recruitment strategies across the country to start centralizing those services so that we can manage that fast tracking… We don’t have a lack of recruits right now.
We have a lack of ability to process our recruits.”
Over the past weekend, the Saskatchewan Marshals Service conducted proactive patrols around the Prince Albert area. The service says it patrolled more than 10 surrounding rural communities, including the RM of Buckland and the RM of Garden River.
Marshals Service Superintendent Jesse Barlow said the service will continue to do so as requested by the RCMP.
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” said Barlow. “My family lives in the rural municipalities surrounding Prince Albert.
So, this isn’t just a police response, it’s a community response.” The Marshals Service has been sending Marshals to assist RCMP with rural patrols.
Saskatchewan RCMP said it will not publicize all crime suppression projects, to avoid affecting their effectiveness, but will report on results when possible. The RCMP is asking the public to report crime with as much detail as possible, saying deployments and suppression efforts rely heavily on information provided by citizens.
