By Andrew de Souza

New policing model seeing tangible results

Sep 30, 2011 | 6:32 AM

Since February, the Prince Albert Police Service, in collaboration with community service groups, have been trying an innovative method of policing to help reduce the root causes of crime, and so far it’s been working.

On Thursday, police chief Dale McFee gave a speech to the Prince Albert and District Chamber of Commerce. He talked about the trip he and representatives from various agencies took to Scotland and how lessons learned there were being applied to the Prince Albert.

And while it’s a common speech in the community—McFee said he’s delivered it some 70 times—this time he was talking about the results.

“Crimes against persons down 9.7 per cent, crimes against property down 12.7, crimes, other down 14.4 per, calls for service down 3.3,” he said. “Folks, we haven’t seen this stuff for 20-something (years) or at least living memory.”

HUB as the immediate move

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McFee said the paradigm shift has been led by the group known as the community Hub. It’s an inter-agency group that works together, shares information and intervenes as a team instead of what’s been done in the past.

“All the agencies are there, 32 people around the table, they’re bringing issues every day to get it done and it’s not allowed to not get done within 48 hours,” said McFee.

“They’re challenging and pushing the envelope and they don’t care about titles and who they belong to, they care about getting it done.”

So far, the Hub has taken on 229 projects and completed 214. When a file for a person or family is brought before the Hub, different agencies are given aspects, or tasks, of the problem to tackle such as housing, mental health, addictions and child welfare.

In the past, a young offender would have had to deal with police, social services and school boards all separately—often to everyone’s detriment—now all parties can work together to get that youth the care and support they need.

Police doing their part

McFee said that while the Hub was having a lot of success, the police are stepping things up on their side of things as well.

He said they’d been improving several areas of police enforcement, specifically bylaw enforcement and the family service unit.

In the summer, the police and bylaw services launched a new pilot project where policing students helped patrol downtown Prince Albert.

With their presence downtown there was a 53 per cent reduction in assaults and 23 per cent reduction in property crimes from June to August over the previous year.

With a lot of police resources going to missing persons reports, the police had hoped beefing up the family unit and being innovative in their techniques would help.

McFee said those methods were proving successful.

In particular, the force has seen an almost 47 per cent reduction in the number of missing persons filed to 366 calls so far this year, down from 690 at this time last year.

Idea spreading beyond city

With those successes growing, McFee said the Prince Albert methods are quickly growing in momentum and attracting attention of many.

After bringing the issue to the province, it was decided that it needed the support of all ministries. Prince Albert Carlton MLA and minister of Municipal Affairs Darryl Hickie said it quickly received that support.

“As a result of this trip to Scotland … there was a need to get a buy-in from ministries across the province,” said Hickie. “Not just the policing side or the health side or the justice side, but all the ones that would have an impact or role to play in this new mobilization project.”

A charter documented was circulated that looked to formalize cooperation of all ministries in order to allow the plan in Prince Albert and it was signed.

“By doing the charter signing, that means all ministries will … work together,” Hickie said. “(We had) the deputy ministers and assistant deputy ministers tell all the staff that they are fully involved in the project in Prince Albert and to co-operate and they all have.”

McFee said all that co-operation was what was really giving the project legs to stand on.

“Brains get you here, networking gets you here, and when you get all those powers and influence in the room you can move mountains,” he said.

McFee explained that the Prince Albert concept was being shown to an ever-growing audience that includes delivering his presentation to places such as New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Yukon, Iqaluit, Alaska and Greenland.

Official launch set for October

With the success, profile and support firmly secured, McFee told the group on Thursday that it was time for the next step, moving from the Hub to the fully-fledged Centre of Responsibility, or COR.

“It’s been a lot of hard work by a lot of good people and certainly some of the preliminary results we’re seeing are encouraging,” he said. “It’s exciting to see the agencies collectively ready to take on the task.”

McFee said it’s not always going to be smooth sailing and there’s going to be naysayers and complainers, but it’s more important to keep moving forward than to listen to them.

“I don’t think it’s going be all rosy—there’ll be some bumps in the road and some mistakes but at the end of the day, we’re ultimately going to have some big successes in the years to come,” he said.

“The alternative—knowing what’s happening and not collectively doing something—is not something I just don’t think is acceptable.”

The COR is set to start up next month.

adesouza@panow.com