BARRHEAD - The Barrhead RCMP is inviting the public to discuss rural crime issues at a town hall meeting in Fort Assiniboine next week.
Barrhead RCMP Sgt. Bob Doddssaid this event, which is slated for Feb. 26 at 7 p.m. in the Fort Assiniboine Legion, will be similar to the meeting that was hosted at the Barrhead Senior’s Drop-in Centre last September.That meeting drew around 175 people and was attended by virtually every member of the local RCMP detachment. The Fort Assiniboine meeting will be a little more low-key, with Dodds and a few other officers in attendance.
Dodds said he thought the meeting in September went pretty well, noting that he stayed until well after 10 p.m. to talk to people and hear their concerns.
However, Dodds said he doesn’t want the Fort Assiniboine meeting to be an airing of grievances about the crime situation.
“We fully understand that nobody’s happy with the rural crime situation,” Dodds said. “(But) there’s things that the police can do and things the police can’t do. And so what we need to do is educate the public on what we can achieve, and how we can achieve it, and what they can do to help us.”
Dodds pointed out the RCMP are bound by various rules and laws, and it’s a good thing that they are, because the alternative would be a police state.
“We follow the rules, which require us to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody committed a crime before they can be convicted. And that’s tough sometimes,” he said.
With that in mind, Dodds said he isn’t interested in hearing people tell him that the police are doing nothing, because the RCMP are doing everything they can.
He said he also isn’t interested in fielding questions about why certain individuals aren’t in jail. The RCMP have a good idea of who’s behind certain crimes, but that doesn’t equate to sufficient evidence for an arrest.
“The more help we get from the public, the more likely we are to catch people and hold them accountable,” he said.
This meeting, as well as the one that was held in September, are the result of an RCMP directive to better engage the communities they represent.
Dodds indicated he was given a number of different options for achieving that engagement but holding town hall meetings made the most sense to him.
Besides speaking to people directly, it also gives residents the opportunity to learn who the local RCMP members are and to have a word with them afterward.
Incidentally, there will be a sign-up sheet at the Fort Assiniboine meeting for the Barrhead and Area Regional Crime Coalition’s (BARCC) alert system.
Through the BARCC system, the RCMP and municipal officials can send out alerts through phone calls, texts and e-mails regarding suspects who are at large or other safety issues.
The BARCC system has been helpful in providing the police with information in a number of cases. In fact, the system was so successful that the crime coalition was presented a 2019 Minister’s Award of Excellence last fall.
