Strategic ways to deal with property theft, drug trafficking, and highway speeding offences are a few of the topics which will be covered by the Rocky Mountain House RCMP, when they make their annual report to Council tonight (August 1st). 

Staff Sargent with the Rocky RCMP Mark Groves will be making the presentation, and he says areas on the borderline of the county, such as Caroline and Leslieville, were seeing an increase in property theft, and they wanted to change that.

“Since we started this strategy in the spring, we have seen up to a 60%-80% reduction in crime in those areas, and it’s because of the fact that we’ve increased patrols, strategically targeted certain areas that were hit by crime, and also monitoring the chronic habitual offenders who commit most of the crime in those areas.”

After numerous community consultations and meetings with the Clearwater Police Advisory Committee, Rocky Mountain House Detachment devised a strategic plan to reduce the amount of illegal drugs in the community.

In the past couple weeks, Rocky RCMP have charged five different individuals with possession of illegal drugs, and/or drug tracking, like this O’Chiese First Nations woman. 

Included in the report for Council is how they are dealing with drug traffickers, which Groves says is one of the biggest concerns he hears when talking with residents in Clearwater County.

“There are all kinds of new drugs, as well as the old ones we have always dealt with. And it seems to be that, a lot of property crime is linked to drug use. So we came up with a plan to charge and target drug traffickers, and that way reduce the amount of drugs within a community, and possibly seeing a ripple effect of less property crime as well.”

The Clearwater Police Advisory Committee is composed of volunteers from all different parts of the county, who spend their time listening to the comments and concerns from residents, which are then reported back to the RCMP members.

That information is used to create a strategy each year on how best to deal with their concerns.