Interim Police Chief Patrick Nogier. (Prince Albert Chamber of Commerce/Facebook)

By paNOW Staff

TALKING CRIME

Interim Police Chief shares distressing details on crime in P.A. as well as optimism for the force

Sep 14, 2023 | 6:00 AM

In the span of just a few months, one man has taken up the cause of leading the Prince Albert Police Service amidst ongoing scrutiny, a provincial review, and rising crime rates.

The numbers don’t lie, as the latest Crime Severity Index, showed Prince Albert had its worst year for violent crime in 2022, as the city was pushed to number three for violent crime among communities with populations over 10,000.

“When we start looking at what’s happened in Prince Albert over the last two to three years, we see some alarming trends,” said Interim Police Chief Patrick Nogier. “The most alarming being our violent crime trend and from around 2019 through 2020 and 2021, we see a steady progression in a direction that we don’t want to go for the community.”

Nogier, a former member of the Saskatoon Police Service, gave a presentation to the Prince Albert Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday and didn’t hold back when talking about some of the alarming numbers the city has experienced in the past year and the first several months of 2023.

He said so far this year, 358 stolen vehicles have been reported to police, on top of 359 calls of flight from police.

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“We’re now starting to see certain circumstances where individuals are failing to stop for police officers and we’ve recorded, year to date, 359 of those circumstances which averages 9.7 per week or 1.4 per day,” he said.

In his presentation, Nogier noted that police don’t have a crystal ball to look into why people are fleeing from police but admitted the numbers are still incredibly concerning.

Returning to the Crime Severity Index, Nogier admitted that it’s a tough pill to swallow when seeing the numbers for violent and non-violent crimes, which are significantly higher than the provincial and national averages.

“It still puts us fifth overall, third in violent crime, and eighth in non-violent crime,” he said. “Prince Albert, unfortunately, is number one in all categories, out of the eight municipalities with approximately the same population.”

So, what comes next? Nogier confessed that there is no overnight solution to the crime issues but that the police service is taking steps to make sure that reports are investigated properly.

“We need to ensure that as an agency that we’re providing a really competent investigative response to that and that we hold people accountable for committing those crimes in our community,” he said.

“We need to provide the community some reassurances that we are going to be responsive and an organization such as this has to continually reassess and pivot. It means evaluating what’s making us good at what we do and sometimes that means we have to add additional resources.”

Nogier stressed the importance of reporting all crimes, regardless of their severity or whether an officer can attend. A couple of the ways this is done is through the Alternative Call Response system and online reporting. This helps police determine which hotspots are in the city and where they need to allocate their resources.

Even though crime is a growing concern for Prince Albert residents and faith in police is waning, Nogier hopes to reassure the public that the police service has the resources to help.

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panews@pattisonmedia.com