While the public might or might not have noticed, Battlefords RCMP have changed the way they report incidents to local media over the past couple years.
The main way police report to the media is in the form of press releases, which are emails that provide information about incidents and often include dates, names, charges and occasionally initial court dates.
In the first part of 2017, Sgt. Neil Tremblay, according to S/Sgt. Darcy Woolfitt, “was basically taking our shift notes and highlighting a couple things that happened during that shift.” Such reports were sent to media.
With such information, the News-Optimistran features such as the RCMP Daily Update.
Examples of such reporting can be found in Jan. 26 and 27, 2017. Police reported on incidents such as collisions, stolen tires and a hit-and-run, but names weren’t reported. There weren’t charges to lay in many of the reported incidents.
But police changed practices later that year. Now incidents from Battlefords RCMP are released sporadically, Woolfitt said, according to what police determine to be relevant to the community. The RCMP reports are less frequent, but they tend to contain more detail than previous daily updates would and many incidents were deemed “under investigation.”
Like Crime Stoppers, the short lists would sometimes highlight incidents to attract people’s attention. Some found such incidents humorous, while others didn’t.
“We got feedback from the community and essentially, they didn’t like that,” Woolfitt said. “We essentially went back to ‘here’s an incident that happened,’ whether it was a motor vehicle collision or an armed robbery or whatever. Then we report on that.”
When asked which of the styles of writing press releases is better, Woolfitt said there’s advantages and disadvantages to both.
The Battlefords RCMP detachment is a busy one. It receives a high volume of calls and the detachment area extends north of Cochin, east of Denholm, south of Red Pheasant Cree Nation and west of Delmas.
“I need boots on the ground so I had to take one of the members off my community policing unit and put them back on patrol,” Woolfitt said.
Woolfitt said not every officer can write media reports because they don’t all have media training.
RCMP press releases come in various forms too, such as warnings to the public and reports on crimes.
A recent RCMP press release that gained widespread attention involved Johnathan Gunville, in which he recently pled guilty to stealing an SUV with a young girl in the backseat.
Another RCMP press release that provoked a number of questions from the public, including questions to the News-Optimistoffice, was the incident involving Brydon Whitstone, who was shot by police last October.
A coroner’s inquest into the case is scheduled to take place in December at Court of Queen’s Bench in Battleford. A coroner’s inquest is a fact-finding public hearing involving witnesses and a jury.
