By Stephanie Froese

Crime, ticket numbers rising

Nov 30, 2010 | 4:03 PM

Prince Albert residents seem to be acting up and paying more for it.

Last month’s statistics report from the Prince Albert Police Service shows that crime and the number of tickets issued in the city increased from last year.

General occurrences were up 7.8 per cent from last year with categories such as crimes against property up to 3199 incidents, an increase of 7.6 per cent. Drug crime increased 50.6 per cent to 122 incidents this year.

“I think you’ll see indicators of increased enforcement on a lot of these specific areas,” Sgt. Kelly McLean said.

“We do have increased enforcement in a lot of categories and that makes a huge difference.”

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Prince Albert police have issued 11.6 per cent more tickets than last year.

Warnings and charges given out for traffic violations made up the biggest increase in any category.

As a population in the city grows it is inevitable that crime occurrences will rise, said McLean. He confirmed more people living in the area could be a factor.

“And I think it’s fair to say that those statistics reflect some of those rash of willful damages that we’ve seen as well,” McLean said.

“Unfortunately I wish I could tell you that our calls for service are down dramatically but they’re not. For example, year to date so far in calls for service we’ve responded to 32,062 calls … and October 2010 we’ve responded so far to 3,127 calls for service.”

Calls for service are down 0.4 per cent and while that’s not a huge drop, McLean said it shows police have maintained a real standard in law enforcement.

The Prince Albert Police Service has statistics reports they publish to their website. You can view statistics here.

sfroese@panow.com