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CSO officers busy curbing offenders

Jul 23, 2018 | 3:00 PM

The City of North Battleford’s Community Safety Officers have been busy this past year to date giving out municipal parking tickets among their duties. They were also on the job as of Monday enforcing the two-hour parking limits downtown. 

“In most cases I’m getting positive feedback from the public because we are making a difference out there,” CSO supervisor Ross MacAngus said of the team’s work in North Battleford overall. “We are slowing down traffic. There’s less motor vehicle accidents for sure. So there are a lot of positive things about our program. Again, it’s a community safety program.”

MacAngus said in his recent report to council for monitoring downtown parking the CSOs are able to use automatic licence-plate readers and software systems to ensure the two-hour limits are “enforced accurately.” 

He also gave an update on the officers’ work for the mid-year mark issuing municipal parking tickets in his presentation.

From Jan. 1  to June 29, 2018, the CSOs issued a total of 2,480 tickets, more than 1,000 tickets above last year’s tally of 1,363 for the same period.

Based on the 2018 six-month period numbers, a total of $47,590 from tickets hasn’t been paid, similarly in 2017 for the same time a total of $15,050 is outstanding.  

For provincial traffic violations, the CSOs dealt with 768 reports for the January to June, 2018 period, significantly lower than the total of 1,780 for the same time in 2017.  

MacAngus said at the end of June the CSOs reduced their work monitoring school zones and instead concentrated their energies on monitoring other areas of North Battleford. Some of the types of violations they have been tackling include people using their cellphones while driving and individuals speeding. 

For yard clean-up work orders, the CSOs dealt with 350 reports in 2018 for the half-year period, compared to 278 for the same time last year.

In his report, MacAngus indicated there were seven special constables and one manager operating in 2017, while in comparison there were five special constables, one of whom was on restricted duties, and one manager for the 2018 period. 

The CSO program has been operating in North Battleford since 2014 as part of city’s Community Safety Strategy when it started in the province.

 

angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsNOW