A review of recent crime at a weekly meeting at the St. Albert RCMP detachment yields no major surprises, but many small clues.
Samara Birch, the city's crime analyst, uses last week's reports to outline the latest numbers and explains details to senior officers. Birch's reports have become a regular feature of this weekly gathering since she started last year, and the data shows what types of crimes are happening in St. Albert, including where and when.
Last week saw a small string of thefts from cars and pickups in Forest Lawn and Sturgeon Heights, officers made a drug arrest involving two familiar faces, and the warmer weather caused a small spike in crime.
Birch said the patterns can be simple or complicated.
"Sometimes as soon as you map them they pop right out at you. Sometimes it takes a little digging into."
Birch's data was credited as a major reason for a 43 per cent drop in thefts from vehicles last summer, after officers used the numbers to target specific areas at specific times.
Police also reminded residents in those areas to lock their doors at night and remove valuables from their cars.
Dosko said officers are being directed to be where the intelligence points.
"If you are patrolling around the right area at the right time then you can prevent crime, but you have to be in the right area."
Officers often have anecdotal ideas, but the hard numbers Birch provided allow them to be more specific, he added.
"We have had some really good success recently in doing those kinds of things, in literally providing that front-line member where he needs to be at certain specific times of the day to solve crimes."
Volunteer effort
Birch's work is being aided with the addition of a lot of volunteer time from Dale Fetterly, a board member with Neighbourhood Watch.
Fetterly wants to create a resource where community members can see the crime in their area through a couple of clicks of a mouse.
"We have an objective of mapping this stuff so people can plot it on a point and see the trends the way she sees it on her maps."
Fetterly has contributed more than 150 volunteer hours working with Birch and he has noticed while crime in the city is very low, it does happen and people should be aware so they can help reduce it.
"People live in a kind of bubble and [think] if it doesn't happen to them they are unaware of it and they are not taking preventive actions like securing your doors and not leaving stuff out."
The Neighbourhood Watch website www.eyewatch.info already allows residents to receive email crime reports detailing where and when incidents are happening. The email alerts are in text format, but Fetterly hopes residents will soon be able to pinpoint crimes on a map.
Fetterly also works with Citizens' Patrol and said the data is helpful to them.
"They look at the statistics that are produced on our website and they use it to decide where they should focus their patrols."
Most wanted
In addition to tracking when and where crimes happen, Birch finds the culprits.
Most police jurisdictions report a handful of offenders are responsible for bucket-loads of crime. Part of the work Birch does is aimed at establishing who those people are locally.
Birch said the detachment uses the information about those prolific offenders to make sure officers know if those people are about to be released from jail.
"Often we will find out when someone is getting released and so we will come up with all sorts of plans to make sure everyone is aware of the release and what this person typically does."
Dosko said the information helps keep an eye on the recently released.
"Most of them have some sort of release conditions so they are on curfew or they are not to be found in certain locations or they are to abstain from alcohol," he said. "If an individual is on a curfew we want someone going to check to make sure he is at home."
Regional picture
Birch's work on the local front is supplemented with regional meetings where crime analysts from the Edmonton Police Service and other RCMP detachments gather to look at bigger trends. That's often the only time to see the big picture.
"Maybe there is only one here in St. Albert, but it is part of a larger trend in outlying areas."
Birch said working with those analysts gives local officers leads and ideas about their own files.
"We notice that some of their prolific offenders are suspects in maybe one or two of our files."
In the case of major crimes, like a string of pharmacy robberies last month, Dosko said investigators benefit from knowing about similar cases.
"We can feed into that investigation that is already ongoing to help catch the suspect."
Birch's position is funded through a provincial grant until 2012. Dosko said this year the RCMP is going to ask the city to fund the position permanently.
In addition, a dedicated RCMP officer has now been hired to work on the people and trends she identifies.
"That officer's duty is specifically designed around crime reduction," he said. "That dedicated resources is coming up with solutions, with operational plans to prevent that crime from happening."
