With the increase in rural property crime in the past few years, residents of Lacombe County will be happy to hear that County Council just approved a new General Investigation Section Officer(GIS).

This new officer goes along with the other GIS officer already approved and paid for by Red Deer County. Both officers will work out of and report to the Blackfalds Detachment.

Those General Investigation Section Officer's primary focus would be to deal with more complex and involved cases, being able to dedicate more time to figuring out the underlying causes of certain crimes and trying to prevent them, instead of simply reacting after a crime has already taken place.

These officers will work with all types of law enforcement officers in the area, to better keep track of rural property crimes.

Because these officers primary focus is on these types of rural property crimes, they are able to more accurately and efficiently build cases against repeat offenders, with a better chance of them being dealt with more severely in court.

Often times an investigation can miss a few factors linking one or more cases, due to a number of different officers working on similar problems in the same area.

This way, these GIS's can focus solely on stopping the handful of repeat offenders, who are generally responsible for most of these crimes, such as stealing items from rural properties.

There was a couple of amendments to a memorandum of understanding between the Blackfalds detachment and the Solicitor General, to ensure that these new positions are doing the job they were intended to do, and are not being used for more general policing duties such as handing out seatbelt tickets.

They also want a report submitted to council on an annual basis, so the county can see exactly what they have been up to.

Reeve for Lacombe County Paula Law says the amendments are in place so council and residents can be assured their tax dollars are working towards stopping rural property crime.

"We fully understand there are a lot of calls out there, and they (police) go from call to call to call, and there’s a lot of work in trying to put the investigations together, connect the dots. We know that the criminals know no boundaries, and we just want to try and see if we can do something to move things forward, so we can get them to the justice system, and deal with all the criminal activities we are seeing out in the rural areas".

The new GIS officer should be patrolling the rural roads starting early next year at the latest.