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By Justin Dionne

RCMP Superintendent reflects back on 2018 and crime in the city

Dec 26, 2018 | 7:39 AM

It’s been a busy year for Grande Prairie police.

RCMP Superintendent Don McKenna says some of the highlights of the force’s accomplishments this year have been shutting down drug operations, and the work police are doing with the city’s sex workers.

“Every year we do these projects,” says Mckenna. “The new twist in that is we’ve been targeting the Johns, and in the future, we’ll be looking at anybody living off the avails of prostitution as well.”

McKenna notes he’s impressed with both the support staff and the constables. He explains some of the constables have been involved in an exchange of gunfire recently, referencing the December 4 incident where an officer shot a suspect during a gunfight in the north end of the city.

“We’ve had some very, I’d say, lively things happen. Some of our members have been involved in an exchange of gunfire. We have a very dedicated group of people in this community who are working on making our community better.”

 McKenna explains the work officers are doing is bringing the city lower on the crime severity index, and Grande Prairie would rank lower if the index measured the city by its current population.
 
“If I look back to when I first arrived here in 2014, we were number one on the crime severity index for crime and violent crime, and 2015 was worse. We are in a much better position. I even look at the statistics now, they base the statistics on a population of 63-thousand, and we’re over 69-thousand, I would say topping 70-thousand. If you take the crime rate and compare it to our actual population, we’d fall much farther than number 14.”
 
McKenna notes he’s also impressed with the work the RCMP’s partners have done in 2018 such as HIV North, Salvation Army and the St. Lawrence Centre, he adds one of the RCMP’s goals for 2019 is to be brought farther down on the Crime Severity Index. 
 

by Justin Dionne