RCMP reports drop in property crimes; situation not as rosy in city
Published Monday November 23rd, 2009
Property crime is dropping around Fredericton but not in the city.
In areas patrolled by District 2 RCMP in Oromocto, the rate of such offences has fallen by 8.5 per cent since Jan. 1 and 13.8 per cent when compared to 2006.
That translates into about 150 calls police no longer have to respond to.
Time saved means police officers can concentrate more of their efforts on other types of enforcement such as keeping impaired drivers off the roads, said District 2 commander Insp. Mike O'Malley.
A property crime covers break and enters, theft of and from motor vehicles, shoplifting and fraud.
O'Malley credits the drop to the use of crime analysts and the concentration of time and efforts on those who are more likely to be involved in criminal activities.
"We're looking at a small group of people who are causing the majority of our crimes," O'Malley said in an interview.
In the capital city, where the Fredericton Police Force is getting ready to launch a program similar to the RCMP's, property crime figures are up.
For the first nine months of this year, there has been a 22 per cent increase in such activity when applied to a five-year average.
Const. Ralph Currie said the department has a criminal analyst on staff who has been preparing for the launch of December's pilot project.
"It's a crime reduction strategy and to do that you have to have a criminal analyst take all your criminal activity files and set that up," Currie said. "Why didn't we do it six months ago?
"It takes quite some time to set up and we've been working on it for numerous months."
District 2 started paying extra attention to property crimes in July 2008.
Crime analysts hired by the RCMP look at hundreds of individuals and then narrow the list down to a top 10 or 15.
"These are the individuals who are the most active and the ones who would cause us the most concern," O'Malley said. "To get up on our list, they would have to have been quite active."
Such lists include people who have been through the court system - many of whom have probation orders, under house arrest, subject to curfew, and aren't allowed to associate with certain people.
RCMP members check on these individuals periodically to ensure they're following restrictions placed on them by the courts.
O'Malley said the force has been successful at finding people not abiding by their curfews or conditions of probation.
"Because we're paying more attention to the smaller group of people who are committing more of the crimes, not only is our crime rate going down, our solve rates are going up," O'Malley said.
"We have doubled our solve rates for property crimes."
Other parts of the RCMP's crime reduction strategy include looking at priority offenders; forming partnerships with community agencies; teaching people how not to be victimized; working with the Fredericton Police Force with regard to the flows of criminal traffic; identifying crime hot spots; and asking just-released offenders what they can do to keep them from returning to jail.
Crime Prevention Association of New Brunswick president Linda Patterson said while the RCMP statistics are good news, people shouldn't take it as a signal to drop their guard.
"You still have to lock your car, you still have to lock your home and you have to take precautions yourself," Patterson said.
"The RCMP cannot be everywhere at once."
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When you ask yourself how and where these dope heads get their money it preety obvious that most of them will get it from the proceed of some crime whether it's from theft of any other crime...
I hope the ceity police starts cracking up very hard on those individuals and that their asses get thrown in jail for many weeks to remind them that we don't need them around.
I am now just over 40 years old, left home a week after i turned 17 and worked my butt off to finally make a ggod honnest living....seeing the generation behind me makes me sick sometimes.