Red Deer’s top cop pleased with downward crime trends

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Foster says they knew it would take about 18 months to see the results of those new initiatives.

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“Some of that was due to just some training for the officers and a new way of doing business, to getting our analytics and our data bases built and fine-tuned,” he explains, “then, of course, the natural court procedures that take roughly 12-18 months. So right away we started to notice a significant decrease in the rate that crime was going up and knowing that we predicted about 18 months out, we started to see the fruits of those labours, so we’re pretty happy with that.”

Foster notes the RCMP has to remain smart about their efforts and continue to be efficient and effective in the way they police.

“Driving around willy-nilly, making patrols, hoping to stumble across crime, that just doesn’t work,” claims Foster. “We have to target those areas where we know crimes are happening, target those individuals that we know are committing the vast majority of these crimes and the crime types as well. That’s the basis of any crime reduction strategy.”

Foster points-out Red Deer RCMP have been on the leading edge of targeted policing in the province, noting during the last quarter of this year, armed robberies, an area of focus since 2016, have come down again by 29 per cent in 2018.

“Our total persons crimes which you know the Maclean’s article likes to think we’re dangerous, well our persons crimes have never been anywhere near the top 10 and they’re down again seven per cent,” states Foster. “Our break and enters are down overall 13 per cent and that’s a significant number, we would have been excited with three or four per cent reductions. The big one though is theft of motor vehicles and they’re down 37 per cent.”

Foster says vehicle thefts have been targeted very heavily by local Mounties.

“Theft of a motor vehicle is very dangerous to the public when you have an addict driving at high speeds through the city,” he exclaims. “They use it to facilitate other crimes, whether it be home invasion or another armed robbery, so we’ve targeted those very heavily with our TRAT (Targeted Response Auto Theft) program.”

Other areas of improvement, according to Foster, include a decrease in theft under $5,000 by 22 per cent, total property crimes down 31 per cent and total criminal code violations down 25 per cent.

“Those are outstanding numbers and they’re worrysome because they set the bar so high, it might be tough to maintain,” exclaims Foster. “Then we have critics that suggest people have quit reporting and in some cases that is true but I can tell you that our calls to our call centre, last time we checked at the end of the quarter, were up over 3.5 per cent and projected to be up 4.5 per cent by year-end, so we’re receiving more calls.

“We want all the reports,” adds Foster. “It doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to solve your particular crime, but we know that eventually we’ll get the people doing those crimes. We may not be able to charge them specifically for yours but we need that to feed our data base and our analytics.”

Canada’s opioid crisis and the recent approval of supervised consumption services in Red Deer is something Foster admits is a divisive political issue in the community.

“I’m not going to say I support or don’t support (supervised consumption services). But what I will say emphatically is we need to help these folks who have addictions, who have mental health issues and are homeless,” explains Foster. “So whatever service and whatever that looks like, as long as it encompasses that complete wrap-around service, so if you go in the front door and come out the back door with all your needs taken care of, I can certainly support that and get behind it.”

To this point, Foster says there have been no issues so far with the city’s current temporary safe consumption site next to Safe Harbour.

“We got on board very early and developed a good relationship with the people down there,” Adds Foster. “We continue to meet weekly with them and we’ve set some boundaries and quite frankly, it’s not been a big issue for us.”

Elsewhere, a new downtown policing unit made up of four officers announced this fall has garnered positive feedback according to Foster.

“We’re seeing warrants get executed, we’re getting some charges,” says Foster. “Very immediately an individual was in medical distress and our downtown officers were right there utilizing their naloxone and were able to assist this individual and perhaps save that individual’s life. So certainly the visibility has been positive and we’re looking forward here to some numbers at the end of the month but I’m pretty confident we’re seeing a reduction in crime in that downtown core.”

Recent changes to Canada’s impaired driving laws is another area Foster anticipates seeing a positive impact.

“Our officers have been out doing the mandatory alcohol screening already,” says Foster. “Just last night our downtown unit wound up getting two impaired charges and if it wasn’t for the mandatory alcohol screening, they would have never read them a breath demand because the impairment signs weren’t there.”

As for the legalization of recreational cannabis October 17, Foster says it hasn’t been an issue.

“I’m the first to say I’m somewhat surprised,” admits Foster. “I thought we would see a lot more from that but quite frankly, it’s been pretty much a non-event.”