About 50 people attended Friday's crime and community safety meeting at the Radisson (rdnewsNOW/Sheldon Spackman)

By Sheldon Spackman and Troy Gillard

"better together"

City wraps up public meetings on crime

Nov 15, 2019 | 3:34 PM

Dozens of Red Deerians gathered at the Radisson Hotel on Friday to offer their solutions towards addressing the city’s top priority.

The City of Red Deer’s sixth and final crime and community safety meeting offered the public an opportunity to help determine what can and should be done to address crime, and to better understand, own and help take action in implementing solutions.

“Each conversation that we’ve had over the last six sessions has been a little bit different,” said Julia Harvie-Shemko, Director of Communications & Strategic Planning. “This one… we’re hearing more from business, we’re hearing more from the agency side, and we’re hearing more about the perceptions and looking at perceptions versus reality.”

“We need to change the story in Red Deer. There’s a lot of negativity,” said Liz Hagell, who attended Friday’s session. “I think there’s a tremendous amount of very positive things happening in Red Deer. Unfortunately, social media amplifies the negative.”

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“The activity is not as bad as the perception,” feels Ken Heywood, a resident of the Red Deer area since 1970 who would rather see money currently spent on things like supervised consumption be put towards addressing the issues that lead to addiction.

“Addiction is just a symptom. We need to solve the problem. If we spent those monies solving the problem instead of enabling criminal activity I think society would be better for it,” he feels.

Logan Nottal, who has spent time in jail for vehicle theft and driving offences, wants to see more programs offered for criminals seeking a fresh start.

“All these other criminals that want to change their lives – not everyone dues, but the ones that do – they have no resources and whatnot to do that,” he suggested.

A woman whose son is currently in prison says she also wants to see more supports in place for those looking to go down a better path.

“I believe it’s counterproductive to release someone without support and expect them to change,” she said. “My son took advantage of the boot camp program. He’s one out of 2,000 that chose to get help through the program, but there’s very, very limited support in the prisons and upon release.”

The series of city-hosted meetings began Nov. 4, with hopes of quickly moving the dial on reducing crime and improving community safety in the immediate, short-term.

“This is just the beginning. If everyone gets behind this we’re going to be able to tackle (crime) and make our community better than it already is,” explained City Manager Allan Seabrooke.

“We can’t do it alone. We need everybody in the community getting behind this. We need everybody advocating because when we go to other levels of government to advocate on behalf of Red Deer, we will go there now with the support of all our residents,” he added.

Seabrooke says the city will soon be reaching out to business and community groups to hear thoughts. There will also be an online survey available to residents who were unable to attend one of the six engagement meetings.