Staff Sgt. Carl Dinsdale became the commander of the Meadow Lake RCMP detachment in May 2023. (Submitted photo/Saskatchewan RCMP)

By Kenneth Cheung

POLICING

Meadow Lake’s top Mountie says crime is steady, online offences are rising

Aug 14, 2025 | 1:11 PM

The commander of Meadow Lake RCMP said the community is safe and overall crime trends have been steady — but warned residents to stay alert to emerging online threats.

Staff Sgt. Carl Dinsdale said robberies, offences involving violence or firearms, and property crime were down, but still happening.

“So we still want to have people aware of things that they can be doing… to be preventative or proactive and in discouraging those types of crimes to occur,” Dinsdale said.

He urged residents to reduce crimes of opportunity by locking up valuables, trimming yards to remove hiding spots, and using security measures.

He also recommended that people sign up for the City of Meadow Lake’s voluntary camera registry program, which allows police to quickly identify who may have security footage relevant to an investigation.

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Calls for service in Meadow Lake have risen by roughly 13 per cent compared to last year – something Dinsdale attributed largely to traffic files and one major drug investigation that generated multiple charges.

The most notable shift in crime this year has been a rise in “other sexual offences,” which Dinsdale said were often technology-related — such as sharing intimate images without permission or sexual harassment that happens online.

As of the end of June, he said there had been six such cases reported.

“More and more often are being related to online activity,” he said. “This makes it a difficult investigation for us… you have to be able to specifically connect to a person on a keyboard and evidence that they’re the person doing it, not just someone using, perhaps, their account.”

The most recent publicly available RCMP statistics for the City of Meadow Lake, covering 2024, also showed longer-term trends. Between 2023 and 2024, overall crime in the detachment’s jurisdiction remained relatively stable, and over the past five years, total incidents rose by about eight per cent.

In 2024, police recorded:

• Zero homicides and zero attempted murders;
• A 75 per cent drop in robberies from the year before;
• A 58 per cent decrease in firearms offences, from 12 incidents to 5;
• A 200 per cent increase in reported sexual assaults compared to 2023, from 8 incidents to 24 — up 380 per cent over five years (from five reported incidents in 2020) ;
• Break and enters up 21 per cent for residences, 23 per cent for businesses, and 129 per cent for outbuildings, sheds, and unattached garages;
• A 54 per cent rise in motor vehicle collisions;
• And a 29 per cent increase in federal statute charges such as drug offences.

Dinsdale said officers were working closely with service providers, improving how they write warrants to get IP address information, and adapting to the growing number of internet-based cases.

The detachment was also focusing on prolific offenders, a small group responsible for much of the local crime.

“We monitor them as much as we can within the limitations of the law,” Dinsdale said. “If they’re not [abiding by conditions], then we can begin to address that criminality earlier and hopefully prevent.”

Staffing levels, he said, are sufficient to maintain patrols and daily operations.

Dinsdale stressed that most violent crime in Meadow Lake involved people who knew each other and that public cooperation remained crucial — adding that every call, regardless of size, helps police build a clearer picture of crime pattern in the community.

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Kenneth.Cheung@pattisonmedia.com