It’s one of the hardest working offices of the RCMP in Southern Alberta and earlier today (May 24th), the Crime Reduction Unit in Airdrie showed how they operate. 

Alberta’s Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley, Alberta RCMP Commanding Officer Todd Shean and President of the Cochrane-Foothills Protective Association Rosemary Lindsay were on hand to tour the operations.

Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley, Commanding Officer Todd Shean and President of the Cochrane-Foothills Protective Association Rosemary Lindsay

Minister Ganley touched on the Government’s recent funding for Rural Crime initiatives and how that has worked so far to help reduce crimes in those areas.

Cst. Kevin Lambert has only been a part of the Crime Reduction Unit for a few weeks now, but he has already seen how it benefits the community.

“It’s been efficient, we have a really good team. We’ll come into work and we’ll identify different problems in different areas and we’ll do research, identify different targets in those areas and we’ll go out and try to locate them and essentially catch them in the act or execute warrants to get them off the street.”

Lambert goes on to say that the Unit has moved quickly in terms of getting the resources they need to look into rural incidents.

Staff Sargent Chad Fournier from the Didsbury RCMP was also at the tour and says that he’s seen the benefit of the Unit in his jurisdiction.

“We’ve had three investigations in the first quarter of this year and the Crime Reduction team has been a big partner in a lot of these investigations. For the month of April, we are down 64 percent in our property crime across the detachment.”

The Didsbury RCMP covers multiple areas in the rural community including Mountainview County, Carstairs and the Village of Cremona.

Fournier says that the increased support from the Government has helped ease the workload for his fellow officers.

“We still have other priority offenders that we’ve targeted and it’s actually given our guys, the front line members of the Didsbury detachment a chance to catch their breath do more work on their current investigations as well.”

When asked about whether further funding and support would be given for rural crime in the future, Minister Ganley says they will eventually evaluate the work of the Crime Reduction Unit and decide from there.