By Ryan Pilon

Local police pick up Scottish tips on crime prevention

Dec 15, 2010 | 5:28 AM

Prince Albert representatives have returned from Glasgow, Scotland with a better idea on how to reduce crime in the city through community mobilization.

A group of eleven made the trip, from Prince Albert Police Service, RCMP, Prince Albert Parkland Health Region, the Sask River School Division, the Regional and Sectorial Committee and the provincial government.

For six days, the group learned from Glasgow's established violence reduction unit, which has successfully reduced crime in the area by focusing on prevention.

Police Chief Dale McFee said he was impressed with how their organizations work together for a common goal, which he believes needs to be better established here.

“We can be better on getting things done together, and we could probably come away with a lot stronger common goals,” said McFee.

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To better understand how community mobilization works, Glasgow's violence reduction unit told the Prince Albert representatives a story about a boy named David.

David was born with an addictive mother, had multiple health issues, and moved quite often when he was young. He was bullied in school, and later became a bully through learned behaviour. He began committing crimes, and while in custody, his mother died of an overdose. When released, David was placed by one of the agencies under the care of his grandmother, who was the leader of an organized crime group. Needless to say, he continued in his criminal ways.

“Every agency had parts of the information … (there could have been) possibly up to 30 interventions early in this young child's life, but nobody was working collaboratively and collectively for the common goal, to get things done collectively,” said McFee.

McFee stresses this initiative cannot be just a police initiative, because it takes everyone communicating together for it to work. McFee said more organizations need to become involved, such as the Metis Locals, First Nations and various health agencies.

Moving forward, organizations in Prince Albert will look at what they can apply from Scotland and what needs to be tweaked in order for this initiative to be effective here. Changes could start as early as January.

“(We might) possibly (create) a hub, where we're just getting together with the agencies and looking at short-term solutions … we really need to focus long-term on early intervention, getting people out of that circle and using a public health model as per se, in dealing with it quicker than we deal with it,” said McFee.

McFee said Glasgow, Scotland was dealing with very similar problems as Prince Albert, so hopefully this initiative will bring about the same results.

rpilon@panow.com