BOYLE – Boyle RCMP Sgt. Dennis Properzi is planning to put his best foot forward at the upcoming slate of town hall meetings that will be his first as the detachment commander.
The local police will be at the Wandering River School April 11, the Grassland Community Centre April 12, and the Boyle Community Centre April 20, with all meetings starting at 6:30 p.m., to discuss “community police concerns,” said Properzi in an April 6 interview.
Properzi noted that, while he hadn’t experienced any of the local town halls before, attendance in previous years had been good.
“I talked to Gary (Cromwell) up in Wandering River, and he said that last year there was maybe 30 people, which was a good turnout,” he said.
Besides these three meetings, the RCMP are also considering a second series of meetings in the late summer/early fall, just to check back in and provide updates if there were concerns.
“It’ll be our way of gauging what concerns are there, and then obviously if there are concerns that people want the police to look at, we can gauge it those late summer/early fall to see how things are going and report back.”
If the community doesn’t show up with anything to these meetings, Properzi said that the plan may be to continue to update the local councils and let the local media coverage keep people informed that way.
“If there’s not much for community concerns, then we’ll look at what the policy makers are expressing for their concerns, not as rule of law, but as a greater area of input. If the concerns get relayed to us that way that also works, it might be more comfortable for the public to reach out to their political representatives,” Properzi said.
So far, feedback has been positive for the local RCMP, with the Properzi noting “I did a lot of online stuff, where [people can send e-mails to me, and it’s been pretty quiet … Everybody seems pretty happy with what we’re doing, there’s no concerns. If there are any concerns, I hope people do show up, but I’m not holding my breath for a major turnout.”
The detachment plans to relay what they’ve been hearing from the local councils during Properzi’s presentations, which included traffic concerns, and community engagement.
One area that Properzi thinks may see an increase in concern is “weekend warriors” who are out using the lakes once the weather warms up.
“The influx of population that comes in with the lakes, tourists and what not. Over the winter it’s pretty quiet, but once we get to the summer, if (the summer village of) Bondiss or Skeleton Lake says, ‘Hey we’ve had a lot of weekend warriors coming in and we want more patrols,’ then yeah, that’s something we would look at doing.”
