We want to apologize to RCMP Detachment commander Sgt. Bob Dodds right off the bat.
Not that we have done anything wrong, but the last time we published a story about Dodds informing a municipal council that the crime rate was on a downward trend, he received a number of phone calls arguing that this wasn’t the case.
We also received similar comments to our Facebook page when we posted the story there.
Some of the comments claimed that the reason why the rate had dropped is that people had lost faith in the police and were no longer reporting crimes. Plausible, but it doesn’t seem likely, as there seems to be a renewed sense of public engagement in reporting suspicious activities following the introduction of the Barrhead and Area Regional Crime Coalition (BARCC) alert system and Facebook page Barrhead Aware.
Others accused the RCMP of “cooking the books,” as it were, and manipulating the statistics to make it look like the crime rate is going down.
It is easy to think that crime is rampant whenever we hear about a break-in targeting our friends and neighbours, or when a person sees a boarded-up window in one of the businesses we frequent. But that is not the case. Crime has fallen, even though property crimes remain high.
Some of the credit should go our local RCMP members, as well as the province who have invested in specialized Crime Reduction Units.
However, a large part is also due to the efforts of the public, by reporting suspicious activity to the police and taking precautions and making it more difficult on criminals.
Of course, crime is still an issue and in all likelihood always will be. As Dodds said while presenting the detachment’s annual performance plan, the majority of crimes stem from societal issues such as drug addiction, and that is not something they are able to change.
That doesn’t mean we should just give up. We need to continue to do what we can to make it more difficult for criminals. Simple things such as motion lights and locking your sheds, vehicles and residences can make a big impact. We also need to continue to be aware of our surroundings and report any suspicious activity to the RCMP immediately and not just put it on Facebook.
After all in the words of the great Canadian philospher Red Green: “We are all in this together.”
