Of the newly released crime statistics for Prince Albert in 2013, the jump in prostitution charges stands out the most.
They’re up over 600 per cent from the previous year.
However, this is not due to an actual increase in the sex trade or in police enforcement and attention, said Police Chief Troy Cooper.
The police service considers those visibly working in the sex trade – often in the downtown core and surrounding neighbourhoods – as victims.
“What we try our best to do is remove them from the sex trade by connecting them to the services they need. One of the ways we can do that is the use of legislation, actually laying charges, using the court system to connect them to services through probation or services. We did that this year,” Cooper said.
He explained they use the charges as an entry point to offer services and counseling to find out why a person entered the sex trade, adding “simply charging them and letting them go is certainly not a successful way to deal with the issue.”
The Prince Albert Grand Council and addictions counselors have joined the police service in partnership on this front, through the community mobilization program.
Overall from 2013, there were 3.3 per cent less criminal occurrences in Prince Albert than the previous year. Within that is a reduction in calls to the police.
“This is important to us because regardless of how we document those calls and what we do with them once we receive them, 5.1 per cent less people phoned our police service asking for help in 2013. So we take that as a real indication of a reduction in criminal activity,” Cooper said.
Vehicle thefts up
Another noticeable statistic is motor vehicle thefts, which at 218 is over 27 per cent more reported than the previous year.
The police service found a pattern when they looked into why there were so many thefts early in the year.
“What we found was that almost all of these offenses were not true auto thefts in the sense that nobody broke a window and hot wired a car and took them away. These were mostly cases where someone left a key in a vehicle or some member of their family took a vehicle without their consent,” Cooper said.
To try to lower that atypical statistic, the police put out many warning throughout the year for people to not leave keys or valuables in their vehicles.
Traffic violations
While overall traffic violations only increased by two per cent in 2013, within that there was a dramatic 44 per cent difference in impaired driving charges.
Cooper attributes that to the effect a number of tragedies had on the patrol section.
“Without a lot of direction from administration they went out and focused on enforcing the legislation surrounding impaired driving…They took it personally. Our officers live here, our families live here,” he said.
Abduction attempts
Another noticeable statistic was that five abduction attempts were reported in 2013, much higher than the one report the previous year.
Again, this statistic alone does not tell the full story as no charges were laid and no actual abductions occurred. Of those abduction attempts, one was a visitation issue between parents in which the child was returned safely. Three were from children to their parents indicating they had been approached by strangers, and the last was unfounded.
According to Cooper, the police service’s downtown presence leading to reduced crime in the core is one area they got things right last year.
He considered drug enforcement and traffic safety related to impaired driving as other success stories.
A statistic to back up the traffic safety is a six-year low in reported traffic accidents involving death or injury.
As for areas that the police force needs to work on in the city, a very mobile population is one of them.
“Thirty-four per cent of the people aren’t from here that we deal with,” he said.
In the future, they plan to partner with regional groups beyond the current work done with the community mobilization team and RCMP integrated enforcement units.
Another area is the youth population between 14 and 18, which is more likely to commit crimes.
On Twitter: @chelsealaskowsk
