LAC LA BICHE - The last few months of 2021 saw a substantial increase in calls for Lac La Biche County Community Peace Officers, says the municipality’s manager of Enforcement Services Chris Clark. Most of those calls were for Community Standards Bylaw infractions that included mental-health related complaints, as well as calls about loitering, panhandling and causing disturbances. Instances of those complaints rose from 93 in the last three months of 2020 to 170 in the final three months of last year.
Alcohol-related calls and property trespassing calls also saw a spike in 2021 compared to the previous reporting period, said Clark.
Over the last quarter of 2021, there were 79 calls of intoxicated-related violations under the Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis act that came in — up from 29 in the same time frame in 2020. Those calls, said Clark are predominately in Lac La Biche’s downtown area compared to other areas served in the county.
“Most of our Gaming and Liquor Act complaints are all from the downtown core, we see an increase there,” he said, comparing calls received in Plamondon to Lac La Biche. “I can count on one hand how many times I have arrested somebody in Plamondon downtown versus Lac La Biche.”
With a larger downtown core and with more vulnerable populations frequenting the downtown area, Clark said the statistics also show an increase in trespassing crimes which have almost doubled from 47 to 78 over the last year, largely due to homeless encampments set up around the hamlet, and nuisance calls from business owners trying to remove unwanted people causing mischief in their buildings.
“Trespassing offences have gone up. That pertains to our homeless camps where we had people trying to set up establishments, but also due to just businesses being more aware to call in when they have people trespassing.”
Noting that Traffic Safety Act files are down from 141 in 2020 to 101 last year, Clark admits that it’s not because traffic issues aren’t still a big problem. It’s just that other matters have taken officers away from street patrols.
“Traffic Safety Act matters are down quite a bit — because we were busy dealing with all those other complaints,” he said.
Staffing
Significant increases in calls involving mental health-related issues jumped from just two in the final quarter of 2020 to 29 in the last three months of 2021. Expecting the trend to continue into 2022, the enforcement services boss says the increased caseload requires more training for his officers.
“We're finding that we’re dealing with a lot of people who have Mental Health Act issues and that’s becoming one of our frontline [issues]. Something that we actually need to work at training our officers better with, as well; to better be able to deal and work with those people.”
Community collaboration and reporting
The statistics from 2021 also show that the department is having more contact with community members reporting issues. Clark's said the number of calls to the department’s dispatch call line rose by almost 20 per cent in the last quarter of 2021 compared to the previous year. Files generated by officers on the streets observing incidents didn’t show an increase in the most recent stats, something Clark relates to the need to have more officers on patrol — currently, the county employs 6 Level I Community Peace Officers, and 3 Level II Community Peace Officers.
“If we have more calls coming in by phone; and we have less observed then it kind of balances out at the end of the day because we’re still getting our complaints. We would like to see that ‘Officer Observed’ higher but also we did have a lack of staffing, which means that we don’t have as many officers out on the road, and we’re short bodies.”
It’s not only the general public who have been making more calls to the local peace officers. Clark says mutual aid from local emergency services has also seen an increase.
“We also had an increase in our calls where we assist—so that’s for assist with RCMP, fire, EMS and other emergency service agencies. Now, it means assist where we can either call them to assist us or we’re assisting them as well, but we’re working in partnership so it’s good to see that roughly 200 of our calls are…with other emergency service agencies,” he said, explaining that the collaborative effort supports the community and aids all enforcement services efforts to better handle cases as well.
Reporting times
The statistics not only show who is calling and for what issues, but also when the calls come in. Consistently, over 75 per cent of reported files are usually received on Monday and Thursdays between 6 a.m. to 6 p.m, he said.
The dispatch line is a 24-hour service, with officers on-call during less busy call times.
Currently, the county employs 6 Level I Community Peace Officers, and 3 Level II Community Peace Officers.
At the moment, Clark says they have hired an additional Level 1 Peace Officer to the force and are finalizing a candidate for a vacant Law Enforcement Instructor. The position will help train future peace officers in the county’s Level 1 Peace Officer training program in partnership with Portage College.
