ATHABASCA – The Athabasca and Boyle RCMP Detachments commanders were joined by the Alberta Sheriffs for a quarterly presentation to Athabasca County councillors to update local leadership on their progress and hear any concerns.
County councillors voted 9-0 at their June 29 meeting to accept the reports as information, which included data on the crime stats, goals, targets, and challenges the various departments were facing.
“As always, thank you for what you do,” said reeve Brian Hall. “It’s clear that with you all working together the region is better served, and as a council I know we appreciate your leadership on that issue.”
Athabasca RCMP Staff Sgt. Mark Hall led with some good news as the department met or exceeded all its quarterly goals between Jan. 1 and March 31.
“We had a really successful run addressing these issues,” said Mark Hall. “Some of the highlights included a 17-kilogram cannabis bust which was worth roughly $200,000, 167 cartons of contraband tobacco worth another $12,000, and several search warrants that returned guns and stolen property.”
The Athabasca detachment saw a 10 per cent decrease in the number of criminal charges they dealt with in Q4, having 238 in 2023 as opposed to the 265 they got in the same time period the year before, while person and property crimes are also trending down. The county makes up 34 per cent of the calls that the detachment received, with the Town of Athabasca having the second highest volume at 31 per cent — other areas of service include the MD of Opportunity, and provincial highways.
“We are seeing still the same issues that we talked about when I was last here; vehicle thefts are still a concern as we still had 25 offences at the last count,” said the Staff Sgt. “It’s not so much just break and enters, but thefts are still an issue here, so we’re putting a lot of attention and a lot of focus into these areas. I can’t get into too many details, but rest assured we are working on it.”
Settling in
Sergeants Dennis Properzi and Lee Simpkins, of the Boyle RCMP and Boyle RCMP Traffic Unit, were both present, with both sharing highlights.
“I spent the last part of the budget year getting to know everyone, going to budget meetings and all the councils. We also did a shotgun blast of town halls, which I was really pleased with; I was expecting some tomatoes, but everyone was fairly friendly and supportive,” said Properzi. “The goal going into that last quarter and this current fiscal year is to really strengthen our partnership with Travis (House) and Lee (Simpkins). The common thread is that everyone is short staffed, but if we do a football huddle together, we can work a lot more streamlined that way.”
Boyle also saw a decrease in criminal calls in the final quarter, dropping from 130 in 2022 to 111 in 2023, a 15 per cent decrease. While the detachment did see an increase in property-crime rates, rising to 66 after just having 58 in 2022, Properzi thinks that it is mostly due to a search warrant executed in February that led to over a dozen charges being laid.
Staffing is always a struggle for the detachments, with members rotating into different departments or, for one corporal in the detachment, paternity leave. Properzi was excited to share that there was the possibility of a local joining the RCMP soon, although it was far from a guarantee.
“There’s one recruit in the backfill so far. It’s a person that is from our area, and while I can’t say a name yet, they’re excited to be coming back home,” said Properzi. “There’s no guarantees you can come back, but I’m fully supportive of anyone from the area joining the RCMP.”
Sgt. Travis House, who runs the Alberta Sheriff detachment out of Atmore and Sgt. Simpkins spoke to similar issues; while the two detachments are separate, they enforce similar laws, and often collaborate on area checkstops.
Field testing
House said that his detachment had conducted 586 commercial vehicle inspections in the quarter and issued 776 traffic tickets in 2023. Both he and Simpkins spoke to alcohol-related sanctions, with the sheriffs issuing 18 tickets for alcohol-related issues, primarily over the long weekend.
“In the first week of May we completed our Standardized Field Sobriety Testing (SFST), so all four of us in Lac La Biche have SFST now and can conduct those tests for drivers we think are impaired by drugs,” said House. “We also have a device that can test roadside for cocaine and THC in the beginning of June, which we had one successful sanction off of so far. Everyone is eager to get into the field to put their new skills to use.”
Grad went smoothly in Boyle
Simpkins was the last to speak and presented the April and May statistics. The traffic unit, which has been drastically short-staffed as many officers have been getting posted to help with the fire response around the province, is currently at a 30 per cent capacity. For April they had two immediate roadside sanctions in the county, as well as two cannabis sanctions. There were an additional 10 seatbelt and 10 distracted driving tickets handed out, plus 137 speeding tickets — in May, the RCMP were down to 53 tickets.
“It just goes to show the impact that our manpower issues have on our ticket totals,” said Simpkins. “We also did multiple joint force operations with the sheriffs, which included highlights like a truck and trailer hauling jet fuel for helicopters that didn’t have brakes, and a U-Haul with no working brakes, trailer breakaway, and two flat tires.”
Ending on a positive note, Simpkins talked about their success with education in the lead up to Boyle School’s graduation.
“Properzi and I went up to the school the week before and did an impaired driving talk. In my 15 years on the force, it seems like every year there’s some kind of fatality or major incident to do with the grad weekend, but I’m happy to say that I haven’t heard of anything to do with it in the Boyle area,” said Simpkins. “The students had the chance to put on the beer googles, and they were all walking around the classroom and bumping into each other. It was a good exposure for them, and I think they were very receptive to it.”
