(file/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Kenneth Cheung

POLICE REPORT

The latest RCMP report shows rising crime and calls in Battleford

Jan 8, 2025 | 4:41 PM

Battlefords RCMP’s latest quarterly report shows that calls for service and overall crime rates increased in 2024 compared to 2023 in the town of Battleford.

Commander Jesse Gilbert presented last year’s third-quarter crime statistics (from January to September) at Monday’s town council meeting. He observed that the overall trend in property offences decreased by 17 per cent, from 99 cases in 2023 to 82 in 2024.

However, overall personal offences had a 68 per cent increase, especially a spike in assaults with weapons causing bodily harm (one to nine). This represented an increase year-over-year of 800 per cent.

In addition, calls for service increased from 275 in 2023 to 301 in 2024, reflecting a nine percent rise.

For assaults in general, there was a 183 per cent surge, from six cases in 2023 to 17 cases in 2024. Gilbert noted that although the numbers looked “dramatic,” there had been a 31 per cent drop since 2020.

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“If you look at the five-year trends for January to September, we’re still sitting fairly good with our numbers,” he added.

Another “spike”—false alarms—rose from just two cases in 2023 to 22 in 2024. When asked what had gone wrong, Gilbert said those were calls that they received, but not all were attended.

“Some of them may call and say, ‘I called. I’m here. There’s nothing wrong. You don’t need to attend,’ so that would be classified as a false alarm as well. It’s not necessarily that the members attended 22 calls,” he explained.

When Mayor Ames Leslie was asked about his reaction to the report, he appeared to have a positive view, but with some caveats.

“You can look and say crime is up, or you can look and say the RCMP is doing their job, right? So that’s the danger of statistics,” Leslie said.

“The more the RCMP are out there, the more people they’re going to catch, the more crime there is, the more RCMP are responding, right?”

Leslie went on to comment on the increasing reality of assaults with weapons, saying, “It’s a pause for caution,” but it is not “a norm.”

In the meantime, he will wait for the fourth quarter report to come in and assess if it is a persistent issue that requires their attention.

“If that trend is up again, then that is something that we’re going to have to sit down with the inspector and his staff to say how we address this.”

He also noted that the council hopes to see the RCMP include the speed control data in future presentations and more people being pulled over for speeding into the town.

“So overall, I would think that the RCMP are conducting themselves in a way that the council is happy with, and we look forward to continually working to reduce the amount of crime that we have in our community,” Leslie stated.

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Kenneth.Cheung@pattisonmeida.com