Lloydminster is seeing varied changes in crimes in the city this year with a decrease in property crime but increases in other areas.
Inspector Lee Brachmann gave the RCMP’s quarterly report to the City’s Governance and Priorities Committee which showed a second General Investigations Support team being created to tackle property crime. The GIS is a group within the department tasked with finding commonalities and trends related to certain crimes.
“We’re trying to weave crime reduction in all facets of our operations and this is a chance to dedicate some resources to property crime.”
Brachmann says they’ve seen an increase in property crimes over the past few years which necessitated another GIS team to help reduce those numbers. The report showed both GIS teams are almost completely staffed with two positions not staffed at the detachment yet but already filled.
The report shows property crimes have decreased in all types of property crimes except for break and enters. Last year there was a total of 2,840 property crimes. In 2019, there were 2,769 property crimes reported. Inspector Brachmann says he’s cautiously optimistic about the numbers and hopes they continue to decrease.
“We’re really trying to address what are the crime trends occurring in Lloydminster, where are they occurring, are there any offenders creating a disproportionate amount of crimes in our city and what can we do to hold those offenders accountable while at the same time working with our partners to address some of the underlying issues that might be at play.”
The department is aiming to reduce the number of property crime cases by 10 per cent. Another area that is a focus for the department, provincial traffic cases, saw a decrease of over 400 fewer incidents than in 2018. Mayor Gerald Aalbers says he would like to see the department to continue working on making road and traffic safer.
“Enhanced traffic brings many things to our street. It brings safety to our street directly. The detachment can then deal with other issues such as drunk driving, driving under the influence and potentially [recovering] stolen goods.”
Other areas in the report showed increases including person crimes and motor vehicle collisions. Brachmann says the detachment still looks to make their targets for the year.
“Our overall year to year trend is in line we’re not seeing any significant increases. There are a couple of increases in a couple of areas but overall we are seeing a reduction in our property crime numbers which is one of our priorities for this fiscal year.”
At the meeting, Brachmann says they will be reaching out to the community more next year and is currently planning for a town hall to be set up in early 2020.