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Spousal abuse increasing in the county

Posted on March 3, 2020 by 40 Mile Commentator

Redcliff RCMP Staff Sgt. Sean Maxwell gave a local quarterly police report for Cypress County at their council meeting on Feb. 18.
Maxwell highlighted that assaults increased from the previous year around the same time.
“We were five in 2018 and up to 13 in 2019,” said Maxwell.
“Spousal calls are higher than I would like and certainly something we’re trying to get out. I spoke about it at the Rural Crime Watch meeting in October … But domestic violence really does exist within the population and these are not people coming into the communities. These are things that are happening inside the community.
“ I feel it’s very important that victims are able to feel comfortable speaking up. Not only victims but family, friends, neighbours. People speaking up on behalf of victims and colleagues when it’s appropriate.”
Spousal abuse is a form of assault and had 15 calls last year compared to eight in the previous year.
Property crimes have an increase of 10 per cent, break and enters are up 150 per cent from 2018 to 2019, theft of motor vehicles are down. Thefts over and under $5,000 is down to 76 in 2019 from 93 in 2018 , possession of stolen goods is up 150 per cent, which went from 4 to 10 incidents over the last year.
Frauds have increased which includes many phone calls and CRA scams
“Unfortunately we’re not exempt from that sort of thing,” he explained, “The best we can do is get that information out and talk to people.”
Other criminal codes are down 21 per cent from last year.
“One thing we are seeing is a steady fail to complies and breaches,”he said.
“I’ve got members checking on people that are on conditions, curfews, that sort of thing.”
Maxwell says police did not have any significant drug enforcement in this quarter.
“In a lot of cases it’s us getting someone (involved) and can tell us about certain things that are going on,” he said.
“I know ALERT has been dealing with stuff on the highway recently and been getting some stuff off there. It’s just our stats don’t follow there’s.”
As for provincial statistics, mental health calls were down, but as Maxwell alluded to that could have been dependent on who is in treatment.
Maxwell says there are individuals in Cypress County who the police want to seek help.
“Those people can certainly be draining on our resources and when something comes in and we start realizing somebody is maybe on the down hill slide and need medical assistance at the hospital, we’re trying to get them in on the first or second instance,” said Maxwell.
“So that they’re getting help and back on their medication or perhaps they’re off their meds for a period of time. Once they’re released maybe they’re able to handle life a little bit better. It’s a difficult situation for us because we’re not doctors but we’re called in for health issues quite often.”
The Redcliff traffic unit calculated 1,256 traffic violations last year which is up from the 766 violations in 2018.
False alarms had a count of seven calls over the last two years as opposed to 32 calls for duty before that.
Theft of motor vehicle is half of what it was in the previous year.
Maxwell says that’s attributed to people locking their vehicle and not leaving their personal items inside their cars.

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