Rural Policing
You may not have realized it, but you received an early Christmas present in 2021 with the addition of 3 new rural RCMP officers: 2 in the Okotoks detachment and 1 in High River. There will likely be some additional RCMP officers added in 2022 according to Staff Sgt. Laura Akitt of the Turner Valley detachment from whom all rural RCMP officers in Foothills take direction. If you recall this new operational/reporting method implemented in 2021 removes some of the limitations of detachment boundaries, and provides increased flexibility in assigning officers wherever they are needed most at any particular time.
If you want to see what the RCMP are responding to, there are a couple of resources where you can look. One is the Foothills Crime map which you can access via the Foothills County website under Rural Crime on the home page, then once on the rural crime page, over on the right-hand side you’ll see a link to the “RCMP Crime Map”.
This map illustrates the general sites (to maintain confidentiality) where crimes have occurred for a rolling 14-day period, and is updated by the RCMP.
The second resource you can refer to is the weekly “Mountie Moments” put out by Staff Sgt. Akitt. We at HCRCWA will send out, approximately once a month, an email with a few weeks’ worth of Mountie Moments. Timing depends upon how often we receive them from Staff Sgt. Akitt. If she’s very busy they don’t always come out every week.
I like the format of Mountie Moments with the lead in chart which shows eleven different classes of offences (e.g. traffic offenses, property crime, crimes against persons, to name a few) and the number of offenses in each class. The real usefulness of it in my opinion, is these classes are further broken down into seven different geographical areas such as Black Diamond or the Foothills County around Turner Valley. It is a real easy chart to read and allows you to focus on what offenses are occurring in the specific area where you live.
The second part of the Mountie Moments consists of a written description of a sampling of specific incidences to which the RCMP have responded. Each incident description is described in one paragraph. Occasionally there will be other things like where to access the Survey on what you’d like to see our local RCMP setting as their priorities.
In addition to Mountie Moments being emailed out from the HCRCWA (thank- you Elizabeth), if you want more timely access to the Mountie Moments you can visit the Foothills County website at www.mdfoothills.com/rural-crime-watch.html . On that page is a menu where you can access the latest Mountie moments. You can also access Mountie Moments on the HCRCWA Facebook page.
With the use of Mountie Moments, you are not receiving as many alerts as to specific crimes occurring in our area as these are now contained in Mountie Moments. However, if a significant crime /event occurs Staff Sgt. Akitt will send out a specific notice to the HCRCWA and we will fan that out to our members.
Changing the topic a little bit, you may be aware by now that an initial report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) regarding a potential transition from the RCMP being Alberta’s police force, to Alberta having its own Alberta Provincial Police (APP) force like Quebec or Ontario. At the HCRCWA Zoom meeting on December 9th, RJ Sigurdson, MLA for Highwood, stated the impetus for a potential APP came out of public input at the Fair Deal Town Hall meetings that were held across the province in early 2020. The provincial government commissioned the PWC study as an initial step to look at the viability of what transitioning to a provincial police force would cost and potentially look like.
In addition, MLA Sigurdson stipulated at the HCRCWA meeting, the PWC report is only a very preliminary step in helping to determine the viability of an APP. He stated no decision has been made as to whether to adopt an APP. Numerous other studies and public input need to be undertaken prior to a decision being made one way or the other. MLA Sigurdson also alluded to the rumblings that the RCMP may get out of community policing in Canada. This would necessitate a replacement police force of which the APP could be one option, so it is prudent to begin the process now. To the best of my knowledge, there is no timeline for when decision(s) relating to an Alberta Provincial Police force will be made.
Happy 2022 Everyone! Remember to “Observe, Record, Report” anything you deem suspicious – the RCMP encourage you to contact them if you do. They say if you don’t tell them, they won’t know.
Dave Schroeder
HCRCWA Board Member
