The city is becoming a safer place according to statistics the RCMP released to council last week.
The second-quarter report to council showed another decline in crime in the city, with a 33-per-cent drop overall. Compared to 2010, there was a 14-per-cent decline in the first three months of the year and a 19-per-cent decrease in the second three months.
Detachment head Insp. Warren Dosko, credited the decrease, which is a continuation of a steady trend St. Albert has seen, to the detachment’s social development work, new shift schedules and neighbourhood involvement.
“I think it is a combination of quite a few things. I don’t think it is any one thing.”
Those positive numbers played out in some of the city’s most common crimes. Between April and June last year the city saw 263 thefts from vehicles, while only 87 took place in the same months this year.
Mischief also took a slide, going from 459 in 2010 to 301 in this year and break-ins went down from 73 in 2010 to 41 in 2011.
Dosko credits a lot of the reduction in this type of crime to citizens taking more care to lock up their property.
“I think people are doing a lot better job of protecting themselves.”
He said they have also been more aggressive at the detachment about some of the more persistent offenders and making sure they aren’t constantly reoffending.
“The people we catch, we get them on a curfew to keep them at home and follow up to make sure they are staying at home. That keeps them at home, it doesn’t allow the reoffending to continue,” he said. “We know that a lot of those offences are committed by a few people, so just honing in and paying extra attention is really paying results.”
Drug offences in the city have increased, but there has also been a big shift in the types of charges, with officers laying fewer charges for simple possession of drugs, while at the same time laying more charges for trafficking.
Dosko said possession cases can be difficult to detect and some of the rookie officers may still be learning.
“It speaks a little bit to our young members in that they are probably not doing as a good a job in detecting the possession.”
On the other hand, he said the detachment’s drug unit has developed a lot of good information and reliable sources to be able to go after those selling drugs.
“It just makes us more efficient and more effective. Instead of chasing our tails, if we can actually chase real information we are going to be more effective.”
The city’s roads were also safer in the second quarter of this year, with lower numbers of injury accidents and property damage.
The first part of this 2011 saw a big spike, but Dosko attributes that to the terrible winter and said he watches the second and third quarters of the year more closely, because they are not susceptible to wild weather.
The detachment also saw a drop in impaired drivers, in stark contrast to a nearly five-year trend of increase. This is the second time this year there has been a decrease, but Dosko said this might be an anomaly and while he is hopeful, he is concerned the problem isn’t really going away.
“I am just not convinced of where that is going yet. I would like to say the incidents of impaired driving are declining, but I think it is a little too early.”
Dosko said the winter weather hindered the detachment from running as many check stops this winter and that might be contributing to the lower numbers.
Dosko said he isn’t concerned that the lower crime means the city will start losing officers. He said fewer calls have allowed officers to spend more time on preventive patrols.
“The reason we have been able to have that increased presence is because we haven’t had the same number of crimes.”
If the city were able to consistently show big decreases in crime, however, he said he would be happy for the decrease, not concerned about his job.
“Ultimately we would like to work our way out of work, but I don’t think we have to worry about that.”
