TISDALE—A town hall meeting hosted by the Tisdale RCMP focused on preventing rural crime.
Cpl. Mel Zurevinsky from Regina was at the March 29 meeting to talk about how citizens could establish rural crime watches and citizens on patrol programs.
He told the audience that by being vigilant, sharing information with each other and the police about suspicious activity through a free app, installing security systems and placing signs notifying people about the existence of a rural crime watch, crime can be prevented.
“It’s a known fact the criminal element goes into an area and they look at that signage, they go somewhere else,” he said.
S/Sgt. Daryl Andrusiak of the Tisdale RCMP said he invited Zurevinsky to the meeting because he kept running into people interested in establishing rural crime watches in the area.
“In the last couple of months, I attended meetings at all of the RMs that we police – and I meet regularly with the elected officials here in town – and it was the one topic that came up consistently at every meeting,” he said. “With the rural crime and how it’s been at the forefront, especially with the last few months, I thought this would answer a lot of questions – or get people asking a lot more questions – on how they can prevent crime and take matters into their own hands.”
The question of using force to protect property also came up during the meeting. Zurevinsky said people can use a reasonable amount of force to protect themselves if they are in danger, but there’s no easy way to determine what’s reasonable and when the line has been crossed.
“There’s no black and white, there’s no matrix that we can run things through to say if this person does this, you’re allowed to do this or you’re allowed to do that,” he said. “You’ll make a split-second decision that lawyers and judges will have two years to dissect and go over what happened.”
Andrusiak agreed with Zurevinsky.
“We can’t provide that clear-cut answer as to what you can do, what you can’t do to protect your property because the circumstances around any incident are so vast and so varying that there is no right answer.”
The staff sergeant reported there were 1,692 calls for service in 2017 in the Tisdale detachment. The bulk of those, 1,044, happened in town. Rural areas had 369 calls for service, while Kinistin had 203.
“The Tisdale detachment is fortunate in the state that we’re in. There is crime – there is always going to be crime. I think people realize that and I think they realize that it’s not as bad as some places,” Andrusiak said, “but I think, if anything, a lot of people came out of this wanting to take that proactive approach to getting these programs in place to ensure that we can sustain where we’re at, as opposed to waiting for the big event or string of break-ins to then start acting.”
Andrusiak said he was hopeful that he’d see new rural crime watches established soon and pledged to support them any way he could.
“Any way we can make our jobs easier and help keep our community safer is what we strive for.”
The staff sergeant also said his door is always open for those that have concerns about policing.
