At the regular Estevan Board of Police Commissioners meeting on Nov. 26, Estevan police Chief Paul Ladouceur reported that there has been a rise in domestic occurrences, and violent offences in October. Ladouceur also disclosed there has been an increase in offences that involve crystal methamphetamine in Estevan, with five incidents taking place in October. He added that such offences have not been common, prior to October.
“There are more robberies and things like that, so we’re keeping a watchful eye to see that it doesn’t start to escalate with the economic downturn,” said Ladouceur. “There were three incidences associated with crystal meth that involved trafficking, and two that involved possession. One of them involved a 16 year old.”
Ladouceur expressed concern over the drug making its way into the school system. He also noted that the Estevan Police Service (EPS) is working diligently to figure out where the problem originated from, so that it can be monitored and properly dealt with.
He noted part of the effort of increasing community awareness was to spread information on the harm the drug does to people and the community, via social media. Ladouceur said the EPS is also considering bringing in an instructor and drug officer from Saskatoon, to help in an educational effort. The instructor works with a former drug dealer, doing a road show to educate the public about the dangers associated with drugs.
Ladouceur also reported the EPS is continuing to implement traffic blitzes in the city, addressing concerns with impaired driving. Additionally, the EPS is working on a more efficient system to track certain offences, in order to facilitate access to these sattistics by police.
“It’ll make it easier for everyone, because when we go through these things, there’s a lot of extra fluff that’s probably not needed,” said Ladouceur.
In the month of October, the number of incidents the EPS dealt with increased by a slight increment from September. October had a total of 663 incidents and occurrences. Twenty-three of them were unfounded, for an actual number of 640 incidents. A total of 295 incidents were cleared by charge, and 48 were listed as otherwise for a clearance rate of 53.8 per cent.
