Crime Rates
At the regular meeting of the Estevan Board of Police Commissioners, Estevan Police Chief Paul Ladouceur said the Estevan Police Service (EPS) has seen a decrease in the number of service calls from 2014 to 2015.
There was a total of 7,877 calls for service in 2015. Ladouceur noted, “there has been a lot of status quo” in various crime categories, with sexual crimes seeing a zero per cent increase from 2014, with 29 calls taking place both years.
There were 118 assault calls in 2015, compared to 106 in 2014. There were 14 calls for assault causing bodily harm in 2015, up by one from 2014, when there were 13.
Ladoucuer commended officers in 2015, for their hard work in dealing with impaired driving offenses, which lead to a decrease in reports of those kinds of offences from 225 in 2014 to 162 in 2015, a 28 per cent reduction.
Ladouceur said that otherwise, the overall decrease has been mostly seen in what he described as non time-consuming calls like animal complaints and traffic violations. Ladouceur said he would like to see further decreases in other crime categories, in 2016.
One area in which the EPS has seen an increase in activity has been in drug trafficking offenses. The EPS has gone from dealing with 57 incidents in 2014 to 124 in 2015.
“That is solely because of the implementation of the Drug Intelligence Unit,” said Ladouceur. “The numbers shouldn’t shock anybody, by any means. We’re certainly keeping busy.”
Marijuana
Ludwig acknowledged the effectiveness of the Drug Intelligence Unit by congratulating Ladouceur on the Feb. 10 drug arrest and seizure of eight kilograms of marijuana and 40 kilograms ofthe marijuana derivative shatter, totallying a street value of approximately $82,000.
“At the end of the day, marijuana is still illegal,” said Ladouceur. “We’re going to treat it as such until we’re directed otherwise by the government.”
Ladouceur said a problem with marijuana is that it’s unregulated, noting that medicinal marijuana goes through safety checks by Health Canada, while the street drug “can be from anywhere.”
“When the warrant was for $82,000, that wasn’t the case of an individual who was using it for medicinal purposes,” said Ladouceur. “I can tell you, when you’re approaching police with machetes, there’s a good reason we’re enforcing this type of narcotic.”
Transportation
Ladouceur said one of the upcoming objectives in 2016 is a plan to update the taxi bylaws within the city.
“There’s going to be some renewal and revisiting of how we’re enforcing those bylaws, with the cab companies,” said Ladouceur.
On the subject of transportation services, Lyle Haukeness, a member at large of the police board, asked about Uber, a mobile ride-share service, saying “What happens if we have Uber, like the bigger cities have? What are we going to do about that?”
Mayor Roy Ludwig said, “I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about that in a city our size, but that’s a fair comment.”
Ladouceur responded by saying Uber is something that generally is only around in larger centres, and that he hasn’t heard of it being established in smaller cities. He noted creating bylaws for a service like Uber is dealt with on a case-by-case basis by the different cities in which it’s already present.
“(If Uber comes to Estevan), I think that’s a bridge we’ll certainly cross when we get to it,” said Ladouceur. “The process will be similar to the taxicab process. My recommendation is that the driver will need a license, a record check, et cetera.”
