By Sheldon Spackman

Local retailers encouraged to attend crime prevention summit

Mar 19, 2019 | 4:10 PM

Retail crime prevention will be the focus of a special event in Red Deer next month.

The third annual Alberta Retail Crime Prevention Summit will be held Apr. 24 at the Sheraton Hotel featuring guest speakers discussing topics affecting business owners, rural communities and individuals.

They include Inspector Bob Gourley from the Halton Regional Police Service (Ontario), Darren Hodson – Assistant Director from Service Alberta, retired VPD Detective Doug Fell and Clandestine Lab Coordinator Guy Pilon.

There will also be presentations from Alberta Justice and Crown prosecutors Ann MacDonald and Janice Walsh.

Event spokesperson Cst. Ray Wilson of the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) says the objective is to raise awareness and discuss strategies to address the challenges Alberta’s retail community faces.

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“We as a police service in partnership with Calgary and other agencies throughout the province have realized that retail crime is on the rise,” declares Wilson. “Statistically, we’ve seen the increase in these types of offences and some of the prolific offenders that are continually doing this. So working in partnership with some of our retail partners throughout the province, I’ve decided to make this summit.”

Wilson says there are numerous reasons as to why organized retail crime is growing in Alberta.

“It could be the economy, there’s a lot of people that have addictions,” explains Wilson. “We’re finding a lot of the offenders are people with addictions, so they’re doing these types of offences to feed their addictive habits. We’re also finding, a lot of these offences are done by people who are currently unemployed and are utilizing this type of way to fill their void in their lives and also there’s people that just do it for kicks.”

Wilson says organized retail crime is a growing concern throughout the province and not just in central Alberta.

“We’re finding these offenders are just going up and down the highway, especially the prolific ones and they’re just hitting the major stores,” adds Wilson. “Usually what they’ll do is they will “fence” these items to make a profit. So we’re utilizing different avenues to circumvent that through our Cybercrimes Unit and other online ways of trying to combat these types of offences.”

Wilson says police take organized retail crime very seriously.

“Gone are the days where shoplifting is just stealing a bag of chips and a bottle of Coke,” he exclaims. “This is a million dollar industry and to a certain extent it’s organized. So we want retailers to understand that the police know there are organized crime offenders that are targeting their stores and that we want to work in partnership with them to hold the bad guys accountable.”  

The networking and information gathering event is hosted by Red Deer / Lacombe Rural Community Crime Watch with registrations now open at arcps.ca.

The Alberta Retail Crime Prevention Summit runs from 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.