Property crime continues as trend for Lethbridge County: RCMP

By Heather Cameron
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

During the County of Lethbridge Council Meeting that took place on December 21, 2023, Staff Sergeant Mike Numan, Detachment Commander of the Coaldale and Picture Butte RCMP Detachment, reported to Council that the detachment had a busy summer both in terms of calls and community events. 

Numan stated that the detachment’s community priorities are broad but consistent; in every community, the same concerns come up: traffic or road safety, relationship building, the RCMP being involved in the community and enhanced awareness and education in relation to crime prevention and some crime reduction. 

Council did inquire about what Numan meant regarding the education sector and Numan explained that the detachment does not have a dedicated school resource officer anymore, as there are not enough officers to dedicate one person to do just that. That said, Numan stated, each member of the detachment has been assigned one or two schools within Lethbridge County and Coaldale and the detachment tries to get to the schools plus the community events. In addition to that, Numan said, the detachment went out to Nobleford and met with an audience of 250 and connected with the community regarding their needs and showed them their police dog. 

In terms of statistics, Numan said, the trend continues to be with property crime, mostly to do with vehicles and vehicle theft. Numan stated that those who commit these crimes are a group of individuals that the police know about and are constantly dealing with. The detachment, Numan said, has a crime reduction team in Calgary who spends a lot of time down in the area dealing with those same people using different investigative techniques, and are having a large amount of a success with it. Other large increases, Numan said, were found in persons crimes and that included being up almost nine assaults from the previous quarter. Domestic violence, Numan stated, is still one of the most frequent calls that they get and it’s also the most time-consuming for members to investigate. Numan said that there also seems to be a lot of false alarm calls between the area and Taber, as people are trying to call internationally and for some reason, they’re getting 9 -1-1 and it’s going through, so that does take a little bit of time to address.  

In addition to those points that he mentioned, Numan also mentioned that Sergeant David Marinette’s last day had passed and that he had moved on to Beaumont and in the interim, the detachment has hired another sergeant who is in the process of relocating.