Crime Rates
MJPS Police Chief Rick Bourassa discussed the crime rates in Moose Jaw.
“In 2021 when we talked about crime rates, each crime that is committed and reported in the community counts as one. And when we look at the data in 2021 we were a little bit higher than many of the municipalities in the province and lower than one other municipality - so we have crime like other places have,” he said.
Bourassa said the Moose Jaw crime rate has traditionally fluctuated up and down over the years.
The Statistics Canada weighted crime rate indexes - Crime Severity Index (CSI) and Violent Crime Severity Index (VCSI) - paint a different picture on local crime by attaching a weighted severity based upon the crime.
“What we have seen in our community is again fluctuations…Our crime severity index is driven by more property crimes than crimes against the person. So break-ins and those sort of things drive that; however, crimes against the person, we saw this over the last few years, as did every other jurisdiction, we saw increases of those kinds of crimes reported to us. Much of it related to the restrictions of the pandemic.”
The calls from the public for service were up substantially in 2022.
“It has been consistently around the 16,000 range. In 2021, it was around there but what we have seen this year is we are up about 20 percent from today to where we were last year. We have had several thousand more calls for service this year than we have had in previous years,” Chief Bourassa said.
There is an increase in the number of tickets the MJPS has issued in 2022 but the majority of them are due to photo radar.
Bourassa said the photo radar at the intersection of 9th Avenue NW and the Trans Canada Highway is a bit of a paradox.
The paradox is the number of severe accidents resulting in death and serious injury have been substantially reduced but the number of tickets remain consistent year over year.
“Since the implementation of automatic speed enforcement….particularly on the highway, we haven’t seen serious collisions or fatalities, but what we have seen is the number of vehicles that are exceeding the speed limit…are staying the same.”
“So it is a bit of contradictory facts we are seeing. We don’t quite understand that. The speeds continue, and people continue to speed through those places, but we’re not seeing the serious collisions we have in the past,” he said.
Bourassa pointed out the anemic police officer per capita rate is now a thing of the past and the force is now on par with other police forces in the province, thanks to Council and the Province approving new hirings.
“That is a thing of the past and it is enabling us to do some of the work we were unable to do in the past.”
MJPS Public Image
Chief Bourassa said the MJPS will be addressing an issue identified in the 2019 study conducted by the University of Regina.
The 2019 survey showed high levels of satisfaction in the MJPS work and the direction the MJPS was heading in but it also showed a major deficiency in the police’s ability to get their message out to residents.
“There was one area where we were given relatively poor marks and that was in our public information area, providing information to the public, providing updates and providing crime prevention information,” Chief Bourassa said, adding the MJPS recognizes it as a problem and as such want to hire a full-time information officer.
“We are operating on a 30 year model where a police officer on a part-time basis on the corner of the desk handles all of that information and unfortunately in our world, that kind of gets moved to the side,” he said.
“We have put forward a position for a public information position that would take that role on. And not only the service’s needs but the community’s expectations of us.”
It needs to be noted the MJPS works in a traditional symbiotic relationship with the local media where many police forces control access and information based upon the perceived “friendliness” of the news source. The model has widely been discredited in many books and journalism circles.
Ability To Be In Public Places
With the parity of the MJPS on a per capita officer basis, the force has started to deploy officers to be in areas where the public is - parks, Downtown core and events.
“We heard what the public was saying. We heard what the businesses were saying downtown and we hear what the Commission (Moose Jaw Board of Police Commissioners) was saying - there was a greater need to have officer availability. The main reason was just surrounding public safety in general,”
Superintendent Devon Oleniuk said, adding “so to satisfy that, we did deploy officers on a fairly frequent basis this past summer. The results that we got…was fairly overwhelmingly satisfying. So we realize that is an issue we want to continue moving forward.”
Oleniuk spoke about the partnership with the City, where the Commissionaires have been patrolling the downtown and other areas on a nightly basis.
After the program completes in about a week’s time, what has been found by the patrols will be looked at to determine its usability and effectiveness.
“There are a number of factors to consider. The timeliness of it. The timeliness of it based upon such things at the weather and those kinds of things might skew the results. But nevertheless, I think it is a very good program going and want to see results from that.”
After the results are analyzed, a decision will be made on whether or not to continue the patrols on a regular basis.
Growing Force Needs More Space
With a growing force and a growing list of exhibits and other propertythey need to store, the MJPS also said they needed more space for their operations.
Deputy Chief Rick Johns gave a brief report as to why the force needed the additional space.
“At any given time, we house over 3,000 exhibits of various sizes which unfortunately forces us to cut out space from our existing areas and re-designate that as storage. With the addition of a number of policing divisions…it has presented us with some further space restrictions,” Johns said.
As the force grows, the MJPS is stretched in the area of lockers and changing areas for members.
“As a result, we have been exploring a number of options to acquire additional space nearby,” he said.
The space requirements and the solutions found are included as part of the 2023 proposed MJPS budget.
With a unanimous vote, Council decided to refer the budget to a future special Council Budget 2023 meeting to be voted on.
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