Council Hears Crime Report Card

Jan 22, 2018 | 7:51 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Mayor and Council got a round-up of the year from the Superintendent of the RCMP Monday night.  

Superintendent Warren Brown says the city saw an uptick in property crimes and, while there is no concrete reason behind it, Spt. Brown suspects it may be attributed to an increase in the number of transients, particularly in the downtown.

On the positive side, the detachment is fully staffed with officers and Spt. Brown says a goal moving forward in 2018 is to retain those officers. Traditionally, new officers stick around for about three
years as “the number of calls is nearly double that of other detachments.” 

He says another success story for the past year is efforts to reduce speeding and distracted driving, as was identified by Council last year. The Road Safety program saw the issuance of 11,321 tickets, 22% higher than the initial goals.  Those tickets generated revenues of $212,0111 in fines. It also reduced the number of motor vehicle incidents at the top ten busiest intersections in the city.

Spt Brown says one area of the challenge has been around the crime reduction. “We did not reach our target there,” says Spt. Brown.  The reason, he said, were three major trials are keeping members of the Major Crimes Unit in the courthouse.  He says that situation used a good portion of the detachment’s $2 million in overtime last year. 

Goals for the coming year is continued traffic enforcement, prevention and enforcement in the downtown, organized crime, some new policing initiatives, and retention of the officer
complement.

 

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