The Estevan Police Service (EPS) experienced a slight increase in calls for service last month.
Numbers were discussed during the last Estevan Board of Police Commissioners meeting on June 10. The EPS responded to 660 calls in May and provided service in 3,310 instances since the beginning of this year.
Crimes against persons in Estevan went down in May in comparison to the same time in 2019 with just eight charges this year as opposed to 13 a year earlier.
“It’s nice to see. It had gone up last month,” said Estevan Police Chief Paul Ladouceur.
April’s statistic was reflected in the year to date numbers, which showed that crimes against the person were still up 38 per cent in comparison to last year with a total of 69 incidents in 2020 as opposed to 50 cases in 2019. Sexual crimes, included in this statistic, were up from three last year to nine this year, and assaults were also up from 44 last year to 56 this year, as of May 31.
Police also experienced a decrease in crimes against property in May with a total of 22 incidents as opposed to 27 last May, and on a year to date basis, there were 137 infractions in 2020 and 110 in 2019. There were two break and enters, one theft over $5,000, eight thefts under $5,000 and 11 cases of mischief/willful damage last month.
Violations of Controlled Drug and Substances Act went up last month with four charges of possession laid in May, and 28 total violations on a year to date basis, as opposed to 11 for this time last year. On the other hand, there were zero violations of the Cannabis Act since the beginning of 2020.
The Criminal Code traffic violations remained at the exact same level as in May 2019 with 13 charges in total on a monthly basis. Out of them, the police handled eight impaired/exceed related offences, four impaired by drug cases and one dangerous driving incident.
Ladouceur noted that even though they saw a slight increase in call volume, fortunately, a lot of their calls were not crime-related.
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The EPS is experiencing a decline in revenue this year compared to last year to date. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many processes were put on pause, which meant fewer criminal record checks were needed. Besides, with less activity in town and less traffic, there were fewer violations such as speeding, and some restrictions were eased, so fewer tickets were issued. However, Ladouceur pointed out that EPS is still on par with the planned budget.
“Good news is we are still where we are where we budget for. Although we are lower than last year, we are still meeting our budget.”
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The bylaw enforcement officer responded to 19 animal calls, two aggressive animal issues, one parking complaint, 19 parking violations, arranged 12 cat traps, did 35 unkempt property inspections and also responded to two taxi bylaw and four other bylaw calls.
There were 155 unkempt property inspections done in 2020 compared to 50 last year. Property owners were given 14 days to fix the problem and Ladouceur said that in most cases people were in compliance within that timeframe.
The EPS also agreed to review the parking restrictions when it comes to downtown hair salon customers. Due to virus-related preventative measures that hairstylists had to adopt, cuts and colours now take longer and in some cases way over two hours allowed for parking downtown.
“We are going to be designing a tag that the business, hair salon, can give its customers to say put it on your dash and you’ll be fine for extra hour,” explained Ladouceur.
The bylaw officer, along with the downtown business owner who came up with that initiative, are working on drafting the tags. It was planned that downtown hair salons would have those tags to give to their customers at the end of last week.
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Construction on the expansion for the police building started last week and is expected to last for about six months. The details of the process were also discussed during the latest board meeting.
It was decided that the building committee has the authority to deal with issues that may arise in between the monthly board meetings and will report to the board at the meetings. The board also agreed that they will need to give latitude to Ladouceur and the building committee for any spending over $5,000. Information about such spending or issues will be distributed over email and phone in between meetings.
