RCMP targets school zones

Times Reporter  

 

RCMP Staff Sgt. Kevin Reilly made a presentation at the regular town council meeting on Oct. 2 about what the RCMP has been up to in the last quarter. 

Reilly said the RCMP has been focusing on enforcing the school zones. School zones are always a key target area and Reilly said when school started back up, RCMP members were out in full force. 

Reilly said he would like to see the members get into the schools more and interact with students and staff. 

Earlier this year, Reilly met with the mayor and council to discuss Highway 1 safety. He said through the spring and early summer there was heavy enforcement, but as the summer months came and things got busier the enforcement waned a bit. Reilly said the detachment plans to increase enforcement on the highway again.

Drugs and mischief are always key problems within the town. The RCMP has recently chosen a new crime reduction unit member. Const. Shannon White will be stepping into that role soon and will be focusing on that within the town. 

“As we know, mischief is always a concern, there’s always that happening. We have some initiatives that she has brought forward to us already and we want to try and (get them going),” said Reilly. 

One initiative that he would like to see brought forward is a prolific offender program. The program would allow the RCMP to do physical checks if people have been charged or are on probation to ensure they are following their curfews, and ensuring they are following the guidelines set in their release order. 

Reilly informed council that for the past four or five years, the policing budget for Heritage Days has been around $6,000 to $7,000.  This year, however, due to extra RCMP members and some creative scheduling, the RCMP were able to keep the budget at under $2,000.

Reilly also told council that Tour of Alberta policing costs also came in under budget. The estimate he had quoted to administration previous to the event was $7,000 to $8,000.

“Again, partly because of creative scheduling and the members helping out and coming in and rescheduling work rather than claiming overtime, we were able to keep that under $1,100. That’s again an unusual thing, I don’t expect that to always happen but it is a benefit,” said Reilly. 

Reilly also spoke about the incident in August where an armed man barricaded himself in a home in Strathmore. He said there had been a letter to the editor in one of the papers that had a few inaccurate points brought up. The letter stated nothing was done for eight hours, which wasn’t the case. Reilly said the incident started at around 1 a.m; at approximately 1:45 a.m., the RCMP received the call and began to investigate. The incident began in a vehicle, and then the suspect took off on foot. The investigation continued well into the night, and in the morning RCMP able to track the suspect to the location where he was eventually apprehended. 

The Emergency Response Team (ERT) was called in to help with the situation. When ERT is called, they bring 20 to 25 members and equipment to cover any situation. While it is a big expense, it is not one that is borne by the town.

“It is not a cost of overtime being charged to the town for any of those resources,” said Reilly. “ERT has their own budgets, nothing is billed to the town when you call them. Therefore, it’s an easy decision to me that if we need it and it’s the right call, the call is made and there is no worry about me being conflicted with budgets and worrying about money.”

Areas of concern, like an increase in distracted driving and people in Kinsmen Park well into the night, were also discussed, as areas council would like to see the RCMP focus on.