RCMP Insp. Jesse Gilbert at city council's meeting. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

Quarterly report

Latest RCMP stats for city show increase in crimes against people

Feb 14, 2023 | 9:48 AM

Crimes against people were up while property offences also increased slightly in the latest RCMP crime report for North Battleford.

Battlefords RCMP Insp. Jesse Gilbert presented the October to December 2022 quarterly report at North Battleford city council’s meeting on Monday.

Person crimes overall increased by 15 per cent, with a total count of 341. For assaults, within that category, there was a 37 per cent increase. The five-year average for assaults went up by 17 per cent.

Gilbert said the RCMP plan to examine the increase in those crimes.

“In the last year, we haven’t seen a huge increase. But over the past five years, we are seeing it trending upwards,” he said. “We are going to attempt to figure out what exactly is causing that.”

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Gilbert said the RCMP want to spend more time analyzing the reports to see what can be assessed from the results. Some of the numbers may stem from domestic violence situations, as well as repeated reports involving the same offenders.

If the numbers do reflect many cases of domestic violence, he said, “we need to know, because we would need to put resources towards that issue.”

Property offences increased by two per cent, with 968 reports for the 2022 quarter, compared to 948 for the same time in 2021. Looking at the five-year average, property crimes rose by 24 per cent overall.

Drug offences decreased by 17 per cent for the period with 19 reports for 2022 compared to 23 the year prior. For the five-year average, numbers went down by 15 per cent.

Overall, the city saw 3,894 total calls for service for that period in 2022 which is slightly lower than the prior year’s count of 4,079 for the same time.

Gilbert also took the chance to highlight the RCMP’s Gang Task Force work, with several people recently charged related to cocaine and methamphetamine seizures.

“I’m very pleased with the results,” he said. “They are fairly significant for a city this size, and for a team that small. It took a lot of coordination. We had an unprecedented cooperation from the division.”

Looking ahead, Gilbert said the division is committing its new Crime Reduction Team in the Battlefords for the next six months to focus on gang activity in the area.

“With this project, we are hoping to have a positive impact on crime in the area, specifically gang-related crime,” he said. “We do know exactly where we were in 2022 before we started this initiative. So, when we get to the end of the summer and we have to run numbers, we can see if we made an impact, and why we made that impact negative or positive.”

Coun. Bill Ironstand inquired about the Police and Crisis Team (PACT) work.

Gilbert noted PACT assisted with 78 calls for service for the last quarter for the detachment.

He said they have tried to be proactive, to have support in place to assist people dealing with mental health issues.

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow