ATHABASCA – A continued focus on repeat offenders is paying off in Athabasca, where the RCMP detachment has seen the property crime rate fall further than expected one year after shifting its strategy.
RCMP Staff Sgt. Mark Hall brought some up-to-date numbers to Athabasca’s town council during its May 20 meeting, including the criminal code statistics for January to March.
“It was the end of the year for us here, and we did quite well actually,” said Hall.
“The year before, we had 169 break and enters, and that was one of the things we were looking at trying to reduce it by 15 per cent, which would have been 150, but we got it down to 111.”
Criminal code files fell 38 per cent during the first three months of the year — compared to 2024 — with 173 total charges down from 278 the year before. The RCMP fiscal year starts in April, causing the disconnect between the calendar year and the reporting period.
Hall attributed his department’s success to maintaining a heavy focus on repeat offenders in the community, as well as making sure release conditions and probation orders were being followed.
“We were able to start focusing on our habitual offenders here, which was another priority of ours. We ended up taking a couple of them off the streets and put them into custody for some time, and we did see quite a bit of a drop in the number of our criminal occurrences in the area,” said Hall.
In an April operation, Hall said the detachment only had four warrants it needed to track down and round up, compared to the regular 20 to 30 they needed to deal with.
“If they have curfew conditions, we want to make sure they’re in their homes, so we’ll show up at their place at any given time of day or night,” said Hall.
“These guys really put a lot of work into these files. We’re frustrated just like the community is — it’s not fun to be a victim of crime and we want to stop that. Any chance we get we’re pushing to make sure these guys are held accountable.”
In total, Athabasca had 354 files registered in the system during the fourth quarter. Hall said one of the most common calls was for a suspicious vehicle/person files.
“That tells us the community is seeing things out there and they’re letting us know what’s going on, so I appreciate that,” he said.
The detachment dealt with 26 well-being checks — just under one every three days — which Hall said include a trained nurse about 60 to 70 per cent of the time, but are otherwise dealt with by the officers.
Council Q&A
As always, councillors had questions for Hall, including a question about the new collaborative community engagement group.
“I think it’s fantastic. I was a part of a working group up in Calling Lake and there was a lot of different projects we were able to tackle as a community and it wasn’t just from the police perspective,” he said.
“This group has a definite potential of doing that and identifying things we may have never thought before.”
Coun. Jonathan LeMessurier also asked for advice on what to do when the public, or town workers, come across encampments now that Athabasca Cares has closed its overnight shelter for the summer.
“I’ve noticed the increase since the shelter is gone now. The burn patterns are very concerning, especially considering our dry conditions. I would love to have people report that stuff and the suspicious activity in those areas,” said Hall.
“The officers will go into those areas and make sure they aren’t leaving garbage or not doing any criminal things.”
