Westlock County will renew its contract with the provincial government to provide an enhanced RCMP position at a cost of about $148,000 per year.
The current three-year agreement is set to expire July 31, and the new agreement will expire July 31, 2017. A one-year notice is required to terminate the contract before that time.
Reeve Bud Massey said council feels there is good value for the county’s dollars with the program for several reasons, not the least of which is it provides enforcement services with a fixed price.
“For a rate, they provide you with a police officer, a vehicle, all the components of the job like weaponry and court appearances,” he said.
“It’s all funded with a flat figure, so it’s a fixed cost, and this council has a desire to know what things are going to cost us so we can budget intelligently.”
The Enhanced RCMP Officer program provides for an additional RCMP officer in a detachment area, who will focus on the needs of the municipality.
While the majority of the time is to be spent addressing the municipality’s priorities, the officer answers to the detachment commander and may be assigned elsewhere in some cases.
For most of the county’s initial three-year agreement, Const. Jim Jimmo held the position. He retired May 31, and on June 1 Const. Lawrence “Woody” Woodman took over.
Woodman and Staff Sgt. Dwayne Rawson made a presentation to Westlock County council at the June 24 meeting, outlining both the detachment’s plan of service for the next several years and the plan for the enhanced policing position in particular.
For the former, Rawson said the priorities will continue to be police visibility and organized crime/drug trafficking.
“We want to really target the county area,” he said. “If you have a problem area, be it gravel trucks causing issues or whatever, let us know so we can go out there and target and change people’s habits.”
As for Woodman’s plan for his role as the county’s enhanced RCMP officer, he said he’s already been hard at work out in the community — visiting each hamlet several times in the first 14 shifts he had worked.
“As far as visibility goes, which I know you guys are keen on, I put 4,060 kilometres on the truck and conducted three checkstops with (county peace officer Erik Nickolson) at secondary highways 801 and 661,” Woodman said.
He said he’s also done several patrols in the county’s recreation areas, including Long Island Lake and the Athabasca Landing Trail area, and responded to 23 calls for service and seven calls to assist other officers.
Woodman said his plan has been — and will be for the future — to be aware of break-and-enters in rural areas near Westlock County, so he can increase his visibility in those areas.
“Last week, Barrhead was hit pretty hard in the area around Linaria by our border, so I spent the next couple days going up and down that border in the whole area and we didn’t get any more after that,” he said. “I’m sure that (visibility) does help.”
Another pressing concern in the county is the issue of people passing school buses that have their flashing red lights on — although there’s not much police can do until September when school resumes.
“In September Woody’s going to work with the school buses, and maybe Woody’s going to go for a school bus ride one day,” Rawson said. “That works really good, because with a police car passing a school bus, they’re probably not going to pass.”
Woodman will spend his time working on county files — although not every county file because the nine constables in the Westlock detachment will also continue to provide service in the county — but he said he may be required to finish some of his in-town investigations and court appearances over the next year or so.
“I don’t want to just hand them over to the other guys, because I don’t think that’s fair so I’ll handle them myself,” he said.
