Police stats show consistencies, increases and drops in crimes, as well as where the police are strained
Consistently high drunk in public files have been a strain on police resources, says RCMP staff Sgt. Sheila White.
Three years worth of statistics show Merritt continues to deal with roughly the same amounts of assault and drunk in public files year after year. The stats also show recent drops in theft from vehicles and break and enters, but increase in vehicle thefts and domestic disputes.
Files on people intoxicated in public have numbered well over 400 every year the past three years. Police accumulated 571 files for such offences in 2013, 448 in 2014 and 479 in 2015.
White told the Herald that drunk in public files have been a drag on police operations, can overload cells at the detachment and take up a lot of time for police.
“I’m not saying that we can’t help or contribute in some capacity, but the police generally deal with criminal acts, violations of provincial acts and things like that. This is not something that we have the capacity for or that we could do by ourselves.”
“If we have an indication that they’re in medical distress, for example if they’ve taken drugs as well as alcohol or too much alcohol or they’ve fallen and hit their head, we get them assessed medically,” White said, noting that involves a lot of different resources.
She said that in her opinion solving drunk in public issues are a community problem — not just a problem for police.
“Unfortunately the police are left to deal with people that are drunk in public,” White said. “We incarcerate them until they’re sober, keep them safe and then we release them usually without any charges in the morning or in the day,” White said.
She said prevention is something that should’t be left to the police.
“I’m not saying that we can’t help or contribute in some capacity, but the police generally deal with criminal acts, violations of provincial acts and things like that. This is not something that we have the capacity for or that we could do by ourselves,” White said.
BY THE NUMBERS
White told the Herald that the statistics on various types of crime helps the RCMP track seasonal trends and issues that police can then target.
“For example, theft from vehicles usually occur in the spring [and] summertime,” she said.
White said these issues can be incorporated into the RCMP’s strategic plan for the coming year. Assault files is an area police have targeted, White noted.
Assault files have been on a gradual rise from 197 in 2013 to 199 in 2014 and 201 last year.
“Our numbers wouldn’t support — right now anyway — us having a bait car, but they are always options that we try to think about.”
“Some of the initiatives that we have directed towards, not just assaults but violence, are something as simple as bar walks,” White said.
“We had found that a number of altercations or potential for violence occurred after bar closing, so bar walks have been on our strategic plan for the last couple of years,” she said, adding police have seen success in this area.
However, the size of Merritt itself can sometimes be a hinderance to the detachment’s aim to focus on curbing types of crime.
In the case of stolen vehicles, which rose by eight between 2014 and 2015, Merritt RCMP have looked into obtaining the services of a bait car, White told the Herald.
“Our numbers wouldn’t support — right now anyway — us having a bait car, but they are always options that we try to think about,” White said.
The number of stolen vehicles rose slightly between 2014 and 2015. There were 19 files in 2013 and 17 in 2014, and 25 vehicles were stolen in 2015. Police had 74 theft from vehicle files in 2013, 84 in 2014, and saw a significant drop in those files down to just 68 in 2015.
Break and enter files were down in last year. There were more than 100 in 2013 and 2014, but just 91 this past year.
White said the Community Policing Office (CPO) has helped police educate residents on preventing break and enter crimes.
“Warning people to lock things up, having a nosey neighbour, is the best defence that you can have,” White said. She also lauded block watches as an aid to curbing break-ins.
Domestic dispute files, which typically involve physical violence, have been on the rise in Merritt over the years. In 2013, Merritt RCMP accumulated 158 domestic disputes, 195 in 2014 and 218 in 2015.
Local police believe the reason for this increase is due to more reporting of domestic disputes than ever before.
Last year, Merritt’s Mounties were also kept busier than they have been in three years, accumulating 6,485 total files in 2015 — 392 more than the 6,093 files accumulated in 2014 and 264 more than the department’s 6,221 files from 2013.
