The Saskatchewan RCMP are working to deal public safety problems in Pelican Narrows.
Before the holidays RCMP reported they arrested and charged 10 people for drugs and weapons offenses. Inspector Stephen Bergerman, acting north district commander for the RCMP in the province explained the force’s crime reduction team was brought in to help the local detachment make the arrests.
“When we have increase in crime rates, in this case we were seeing several offenses being committed by the same people within the community and we were able to contact our Crime Reduction Team to come in and assist local general duty membership with executing drug warrants for several residences,” he said.
Bergerman along with other members of the Saskatchewan RCMP were in attendance at a community meeting held in the fall where residents voiced their concerns about crime. Bergerman said before the meeting RCMP were planning to deploy the Crime Reduction Team to the community to support frontline officer. He added the RCMP does deploy the specialize team to communities where high crime is an issue.
“We will continue to be bringing in our Crime Reduction Team to Pelican Narrows to assist the general duty members and police in that community,” he said.
RCMP are also planning to bring in another specialized group of officers in their Warrant Enforcement Team, which will be looking to find and arrest people who are in Pelican Narrows and have active warrants for their arrest.
“They focus on repeat offenders that are on outstanding warrants and known to be in the community, so we target those individuals and get them out of the community and back in to the court system,” he said.
Along with targeting serious crimes, Bergerman said RCMP were also active in the community over the holidays running check stops which caught a number of violations.
“Those resulted in several, multiple liquor seizures which did take a lot of illegal liquor off of the streets in Pelican Narrows,” he said.
Bergerman said RCMP are regularly in contact with leadership from Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation (PBCN) when it comes to dealing with the current problems in Pelican Narrows. He said there are also plans to have more discussions with the residents of Pelican Narrows about their concerns.
“We are expecting another community meeting to take place here in the near future,” he said.
(Residents of Pelican Narrows at a community meeting last October. Photo by Michael Joel-Hansen.)
(Top Photo: by Michael Joel-Hansen.)