You may have noticed more media reports about police activities here in the Battlefords recently.
Not only are there more stories about crime happenings, but also a daily report provided by the RCMP on their regular activities - activities that include the routine and mundane and, sometimes, even the humorous.
This increase in information is not your imagination, but it's also not due to some massive increase in crime in the community.
Rather, it's the result of a pilot project by the Battlefords RCMP to get more information out there so people have more knowledge about what is going on and what police members are responding to.
That was the subject of a presentation by Sgt. Neil Tremblay and Sgt. Darcy Woolfitt of Battlefords RCMP Detachment before directors at the Battlefords Chamber of Commerce Dec. 10.
Woolfitt was on an assignment and arrived later to the meeting, which meant Tremblay did most of the talking early on. He talked about why the RCMP decided to release more information to the public on the RCMP's daily activities.
He explained that over the past year the force was dealing with online messages that "have been causing us no end of difficulties, time and pain to deal with."
The most famous one was about the gangs that were going to shoot people, said Tremblay, but there were other rumours that also gained momentum.
The force spent extensive time trying to determine the validity of those rumours. In the case of the September rumor about gangs shooting random people, Tremblay estimated 40 to 50 man hours were spent trying to track down the source of that rumour and find out if there was any validity to it.
It was becoming a situation where, in the absence of information, "people were kind of making it up and creating their own stories and they were starting to gain more and more momentum, whether it was the online versions or it was coffee row or a combination of both. It was causing us no end of grief and it's really hard to chase these things after the fact sometimes and ease peoples' fears."
He also noted concerns raised by the local media and the public about "perceptions we weren't being terribly upfront or clear with what we were doing, what was going on in the community, that kind of thing.
"And quite frankly, I think that was a fair criticism. I think we were looking back at some of the lack of media releases we were doing, unless it was really serious we really weren't saying anything. But people, in the absence of information, were making up their own stories about a lot of things and it was creating a lot of fear in the community."
Combined with the certain violent incidents that did occur, it "just created this element of fear," Tremblay said.
As a result and after discussions with media, Battlefords RCMP decided to try a pilot project that is the first one in Saskatchewan and which is likely to be replicated soon in Yorkton and Lloydminster, Tremblay said.
That project is to "let people know exactly what we're doing," that "kind of demystifies the whole process."
What came of that was the daily reports - reports you have in the News-Optimist, Regional Optimist, at newsoptimist.ca and other local media outlets.
The idea of the reports was not just to notify the media, Tremblay told Chamber directors, but to "put the public at ease."
"There was a lot of misinformation, a lot of conjecture, a lot of exaggerated beliefs out there in terms of the things going on in the community. And we thought this probably would help to alleviate that. Rumours don't really have a place to start if everybody knows this is what's going on."
The RCMP also wanted to have people more involved in potentially solving some of the crimes and Tremblay said the best way to do that is put out some information about instances and why and how they occurred, and potentially garner some more information from the public. It has worked to some extent in solving some of the cases, Tremblay noted.
The big difference the RCMP has noticed is that the rumour mill has "kind of stopped" said Tremblay.
"A lot of the feedback we've been getting from the public in particular is they seem a lot more relaxed. They know exactly what's going on, they know what to be concerned with and what not to be concerned with, and so far it seems to have had a pretty positive effect."
A big discussion point for those at the meeting was the media feeding frenzy that the city saw during the summer and fall. During that period, several out-of-town news organizations descended on North Battleford to do stories on the crime situation.
A few of those accounts painted a gloomy picture of a city gripped by drug and gang violence, with CTV National News running a story declaring North Battleford the Crime Capital of Canada.
"Sometimes they grab onto a story and they just don't want to let it go," Tremblay said of the media coverage.
The release of national Crime Severity Index numbers showing North Battleford as the worst in Canada came down around the same time as a shooting. It created the "perfect storm," Tremblay said.
"It all hit at the same time, and it was the bone (the media) wanted to grab onto."
The message the force has tried to address, not so much with local media but with those on the outside, said Tremblay, is that "this great large crime wave that everyone's talked about doesn't exist.
"I think that message is finally, slowly, slowly getting through. And even just the presence of our daily reports, they're seeing what we're dealing with. We're not dealing with mad gangs tackling people down main street on a daily basis. We're dealing with a lot of the same element that any city will deal with. It is not to diminish the fact that, yeah, we do have a crime problem here. You've had a crime problem here for probably 20, 25 years. But at the same time it does no one any good to exaggerate the problem or sensationalize."
He believes one of the best things they did was release numbers from the past five years showing crime is actually down in the city in 2013 compared to before.
While that message seems to be getting through to media, Tremblay did acknowledge the story was still "lingering on."
The most recent coverage was a StarPhoenix story Dec. 9 entitled "Grassroots groups tackle NB crime rate."
Among those interviewed for that story, written by Jonathan Charlton and Charlene Tebbutt, were Steve Cormons of the Good Neighbour Network as well as Guy Turcotte of the Facebook group North Battleford Victims of Crime, with Turcotte in expressing fears about safety in the city.
The story drew a negative reaction from Chamber director Warren Williams.
"Frankly, it pisses me off," he said.
"When I read about the Facebook pages and 'I'm fearful to go to school' and stuff like ... it's just presented in a bad light," said Williams, who was critical of the story's focus on fear.
Tremblay, who was interviewed in the piece as well, responded he had much the same opinion of the article.
"It's that ability some reporters have to find the one guy in the town who's going to give them the best quote," said Tremblay.
There was considerable talk during the question and answer session about the crime severity index in general. Tremblay pointed out it was hard to compare one community to another based on the index. He noted one factor wasmuch crime in North Battleford ends up getting reported to police, which may not be the case in a major city.
He also noted he's worked in smaller locations where the "crime severity index, if they publish them, would be higher than it is here." He pointed to Fort Qu'Appelle and noted that in his four years there, there were 10 homicides.
There was also some discussion about the impact crime had on business. That was among those questions Woolfitt fielded, who noted shoplifting was a big issue for many of them.
Chamber president Sharon Mohagen says the recent talk about crime may have had an impact in getting "everybody more aware in looking at their next door neighbour and just paying attention."
That prompted Woolfitt to encourage people to go to the latest Neighbourhood Watch organizational meeting scheduled for the Don Ross Centre the next night. "We have to get to know our neighbours and our business partners," said Woolfitt.
As for the daily reports, they seemed to be appreciated by the directors and drew a particularly amused reaction from Malcolm Anderson.
"They need to have a byline that says 'C'mon, Man,' " said Anderson, in reference to what he called the "goofball" things found in the reports.
With respect to the reports, Tremblay did say some adjustments have been made recently in response to concerns expressed by the Chamber and by area businesses about specific locations identified that could embarrass businesses or cost them customers.
"Unless we're dealing with either a serious incident or an incident where we're trying to solve a specific crime, we're going to keep the addresses completely out of it," said Tremblay. As an example, instead of saying "at a licensed premise or bar on XX street,", the reports would just say "a licensed premise or bar."
Tremblay said the main focus was for people to "understand what we're doing and what we're attending to." Tremblay also says the force appreciates any feedback they receive about the reports.
Councillor Ryan Bater, the city's representative on the Chamber board, voiced support for the increased reporting from the RCMP and noted the reaction he's received from the public to the increased reports.
He noted public opinion has shifted since releasing the reports from a tone of "why isn't anybody doing anything?" to empathy over what police have to deal with on a daily basis.
