By Aaron Stuckel

Prince Albert crime rates decrease in 2011

Jan 30, 2012 | 4:09 PM

The number of criminal charges in the city is down according to yearly crime statistics released by the Prince Albert Police Service early Monday.

According to the report, occurences went down overall by 11.3 per cent in 2011 from the previous year.

Police Chief Dale McFee went over the report, which showed most individual crime categories having gone down.

Crimes against persons were down 4.9 per cent across the city, while property crimes decreased 7.9 per cent overall.

McFee said that the newly-enacted HUB and CORE programs, increased police visibility, and the Downtown Bylaw Program were big reasons for the positive numbers.

Missing pet

'She means the world to our family': Woman seeks help in finding missing pet parrot

9h ago

BE CAREFUL ON THE ROADS

Semi flips outside P.A.; one of dozens of incidents on Sask. roads due to winter weather

9h ago

NO GO FOR BUSES

School bus routes outside P.A. canceled due to spring snowstorm

14h ago

He thanked his staff and community partners and wanted to share the success with them.

“Safety is more than policing and safety of a community is something we all want,” he said.

“So when we have successes we must share with everyone that is working toward common goals.”

McFee also thanked his IT staff for their work. When it comes to community safety, McFee said working smarter is important and tracking statistics is a valuable way of defining crime trends in Prince Albert.

But there are still issues that need to be resolved in the city, he said.

One of those issues was what McFee called extreme alcohol usage. With 2,808 arrests in 2011, a 5.6 per cent increase from 2010, for public drunkenness, McFee expressed a need to work together with social agencies to curb the issue.

“We still continue to arrest a disproportionate number of intoxicated persons,” said McFee. “This is something our community obviously needs to look at and we need to, as a collective group, address this.”

McFee expressed the need for an alcohol screening strategy in northern Saskatchewan to help curb the number of alcohol related arrests. He said the problem touches on just about all areas of policing.

“A large part of our crime—at times we’ve estimated 80 per cent—is related to alcohol or drugs,” he said. “It might even be more than that.”

Other increases included sexual assaults and prostitution, both of which are often a result of alcohol or drug problems, he said.

However, McFee said there is a need for people to be more educated on what constitutes sexual assault and that people need to be held accountable for any offences they’ve committed.

The latest police statistics will soon be available on the police service's website.

How do you feel about the reported reduction? Let us know by taking our poll on the issue.

news@panow.com