Cochrane RCMP held a virtual town hall last night to update the community on the state of policing in Rocky View County.
Detachment commander inspector David Brunner spearheaded the public forum alongside Sgt. Jeff MacIntosh and office manager Beth Hoskins. Also in attendance was Lorraine Wesley, the manager of enforcement services with Rocky View County.
"This virtual town hall is one of the consulting methods [RCMP] utilize," Brunner told those in attendance. "We want to give Rocky View residents a voice to provide input into the direction of their local RCMP."
The forum began with an update from Brunner on some of the policing trends that the Cochrane RCMP has witnessed over the past year.
According to Brunner, the Cochrane RCMP detachment responded to 9,038 files throughout 2021, with 3,163 of those files being dealt with by a pilot policing program in Stoney Nakoda First Nation.
"We have moved forward with creating the Stoney Nakoda detachment project," Brunner said. "By starting this project, it provided policing dedicated to the Nation and now members are not responding to calls from one end of our detachment area to the other. This is a real help in our response times."
Brunner said that the top calls that RCMP receives in the region are related to traffic, followed by mischief, property damage, suspicious persons and animal issues. However, Brunner did note the detachment has seen increased mental health and domestic violence calls.
"These are things that are concerning, and to that end, I've worked with the district officer in Edmonton and we have solidified a regional police crisis team," Brunner said.
That crisis team will consist of an RCMP officer and a trained mental health nurse who will follow up and assist RCMP members dealing with mental-health calls. The initiative is in line with what large metropolitan centres like Calgary have implemented in recent years. Brunner said the crisis team will enter operations in the area on March 7 and be based out of the Cochrane detachment.
Brunner also highlighted that the Cochrane detachment is expected to receive additional resources in the way of eight additional officers over the course of 2022, saying that, as of press time, they have five new members in operations.
Hopefully, these additional resources will help the RCMP increase their response time related to the provincial average of 21.3 minutes and in patrolling their coverage area, which Brunner said far outsizes that of the Calgary Police Service and other metropolitan detachments.
"To put this into perspective, the total size of the service area, divided by the number of police officers for the Calgary Police Service is 375 metres squared," he said. "The RCMP is 378 kilometres squared. So, you can see that we have to be better at providing service to the rural communities with that kind of landmass to cover."
