Mayor David Gillan, centre, left photo, and RCMP Staff Sgt. Jason Teniuk, right photo, shown at Monday's city council meeting. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW staff)

By Angela Brown

Volunteers needed

NB RCMP report shows increase in robberies, vehicle thefts

Apr 26, 2022 | 7:40 AM

The Battlefords RCMP are reporting a number of increases in the January to March quarterly crime stats for the city.

Staff Sgt. Jason Teniuk presented the report at this week’s North Battleford city council meeting.

The city experienced an overall 24 per cent increase in calls for the period.

Robbery reports went up by a staggering 250 per cent, with 14 incidents in 2022, compared to four for the same period the prior year. Teniuk said in most cases the offender and the victim knew one another.

“We are seeing the weather get a little bit nicer,” he added. “That number may increase or it may not. We’ll have to see what happens here as we move forward into the next quarter.”

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Arson cases jumped by 350 per cent, to nine reports in 2022, more than triple the 2021 count for the same time. One of these 2022 reports involved the 102 Street apartment building fire.

“We are definitely seeing an increase in arson,” Teniuk said. “It’s something we are keeping our eye on. It doesn’t look like this is a [single] group or person involved in this at this point. It looks like it is just a series of unfortunate circumstances going on around the city.”

Another category that saw a number of increases was vehicle thefts, with 73 cases in 2022, close to double last year’s count for the same time.

Teniuk said many of the vehicle thefts were related to people leaving their keys in the ignition to warm their cars during the cold snap earlier in the year when it was -40 C.

“Everybody wants to get into a warm vehicle but it seems nobody wants to lock it,” he said. “So that creates an issue.”

Teniuk said police discovered someone was driving a van around the city dropping off people who were just stealing cars at the time of some of the incidents.

He added the report also shows a high number of thefts in the area for the period in general, which he attributes to “a big sign of the times,” with inflation at a record level.

The officer took the opportunity to point out that the Battlefords Citizens on Patrol Program (COPP) is in need of more volunteers. He said when more COPP volunteers are driving around the city looking for suspicious activity to alert the police, that serves as a preventive approach to crime.

“We can’t arrest our way out of this …,” Teniuk said. “I think what we need to do is focus on prevention.”

Teniuk encourages people to volunteer with the COPP.

“We can continue to complain, or we can come out one night, drive around and see if we can prevent something from happening,” he said.

Following the meeting, Mayor David Gillan echoed Teniuk’s sentiments about the need for more citizens to offer their time to help with the COPP’s work.

“The Citizens on Patrol Program is very important in every community, and ours is no exception,” Gillan said. “We are hoping that more and more people get involved with Citizens on Patrol because it’s all about everybody chipping in a little bit to try to prevent crime, and to make our community even safer.”

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow