The St. Albert RCMP is considering making habitual offenders, relationship violence and people with mental health issues priorities for the coming year.
Insp. Ken Foster, the RCMP detachment commander, walked city council through the past year’s priorities while offering some tentative policing priorities for 2016-17. The priorities would be included in the annual performance plan, which is currently being developed.
“The goal is not to overwhelm,” Foster said. “Three or four goals to really put an emphasis on and work with the committee is the desired approach.”
Those goals shouldn’t be too easy, he said, but the goals shouldn’t be unobtainable either. They also need to be measurable.
“What gets measured gets done,” Foster said.
Foster shared some ideas for priorities based on what he’s heard so far from his community consultations and from detachment staff. Council has the chance to weigh in before the plan is completed.
Focusing on habitual offenders, relationship violence and persons with mental health issues are areas he’s identified for possible priorities so far.
“Relationship violence is up,” he said, noting some of that is related to the troubled economy.
As for people with mental health issues, he said there were 280 files in 2015 directly attributed to that. Foster said that’s likely a small percentage of the cases that land on the RCMP’s desk that relate to a mental health issue.
“I’m going to take a bit of a higher level view and work with other agencies to try and develop some strategies to work on issues around that,” he said, adding whether it becomes a priority will be determined after he concludes his consultations.
Coun. Tim Osborne asked about the affect dealing with people with mental health issues has on the RCMP’s services, noting it is more of a health issue than a legal issue.
“The impact is a time and a capacity issue from a strictly business perspective,” Foster said. Sometimes a medical condition becomes criminalized, and the legal system can seem to be a last stop sometimes, he said.
Coun. Sheena Hughes shared she continues to hear desire for more traffic enforcement at the local level.
Foster also ran through last year’s local policing priorities, which included more police visibility, work on organized crime and crime reduction strategies.
Work on those priorities ranged from appearances at schools to encouraging RCMP units to work together more closely to fight organized crime.
In addition to community priorities, the RCMP have to also incorporate both national and provincial priorities as well. Foster said he doesn’t anticipate any issues trying to do so.
Council has until early April to give input on the community priorities for the annual performance plan.
