By Adam Ophus

Rural Crime

Rocky RCMP’s new Crime Reduction Unit showing promise

Dec 9, 2019 | 11:30 AM

Rocky Mountain House RCMP have started a pilot project to help in the fight against property crime in the area.

RCMP Detachment Commander Christian Delisle implemented a new Crime Reduction Unit (CRU) comprised of two officers with a combined experienced of nearly twenty years.

The new CRU is a six-month pilot project that began December 2, that intends to focus on property damage and has so far had excellent results.

“In the first three days, we had three arrests,” Delisle shared, who noted that he doesn’t expect those numbers to continue as more arrests means less criminals, and less criminals mean less crime.

“This is one of the few jobs where it’s a good thing if we have less work.”

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Property crime is considered to be a more difficult to solve compared to personal crime, since there are usually no witnesses to give more specific and helpful information.

“It’s done when no one is looking, at night or they’re gone,” explained Delisle.

The idea for the initiative came to Rocky’s new Detachment Commander shortly after the attack of a young mother near Eckville at her rural home, and hearing from residents at the associated town hall meeting regarding crime.

“One of the big topics that came up was property crime. They wanted to feel safe in their home and looking at the stats that we had, property crime was on the rise and it needed to be addressed.”

Delisle clarified that what was done before wasn’t wrong, but proper policing involves being able to adapt and change when needed.

“Criminals change their techniques and so do we,” Delisle said.

The Town of Drayton Valley also uses a CRU with one designated officer, and Delisle stated that they had seen excellent results.

Rocky’s new Crime Reduction Unit is able to increase its effectiveness by allocating 100% of their time on resources a one specific type of offense, property crime.

Delisle asked for the communities help by making it harder for criminals by making sure their property is locked up and to report everything, no matter how big or small to give the new CRU as much as possible to work with.