Photo: Shaun Penner / EverythingGP

By Shaun Penner

Potential Clairmont RCMP Detachment

Beaupre pleased discussions around potential County RCMP detachment moving forward

Dec 16, 2020 | 12:21 PM

The Reeve for the County of Grande Prairie is happy to finally see discussions moving forward with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police about creating a stand-alone rural detachment within the County.

This comes after Council moved on Monday to create a committee consisting of Reeve Leanne Beaupre, Councillors Daryl Beeston and Harold Bulford, members of the County administrative team and RCMP members that will work together to plan the future of rural policing for the County of Grande Prairie, including the potential of establishing a detachment in the Hamlet of Clairmont.

Beaupre says for as long as she has been on council, the desire to establish a detachment somewhere within the County has been high on the priority list.

Now with the provincial mandate to further fund their own police resources as the Hamlet of Clairmont nears a population of 5,000 residents, a detachment the County can call its own is even more necessary.

“It’s been council’s objective to have a rural detachment in the County of Grande Prairie,” said Beaupre. “As we best felt that a detachment for rural residents would be best served by having it somewhere closer to a rural area, versus having it in the middle of the City of Grande Prairie.”

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Beaupre notes the County, over time, has grown to fund eight enhanced RCMP officers that serve the County and surrounding rural areas specifically. This is because council has raised concerns about law enforcement resources for the County, including the number of officers dedicated to serving rural areas and the response times that come along with those resources.

“With our enhanced members and that integrated service, we already have an agreement with regards to those members,” said Beaupre. “We knew that it was going to, at some point, come to having to look at a different model for policing in the County of Grande Prairie, so we’ve been proactive in doing that.”

The County’s hope for the new detachment would see officers serving the east County, Sexsmith, Clairmont and the MD of Greenview stationed there. The two enhanced RCMP members that work out of the Beaverlodge detachment would remain stationed there to serve the west county.

Beaupre says while this latest development is welcome news, it is just the initial step towards the creation of a new detachment, and much work and discussions still remain.

“Really, now, it’s the next process of forming a joint committee to look at what the needs are, and even start doing some things along the lines of site placement.”

She adds it will be up to the RCMP to come up with the logistics of how the detachment would run and where it would be located.

“The RCMP have themselves a very rigid, structured process, and from the County of Grande Prairie we have to follow that process as well,” said Beaupre. “They’ll be looking at what their needs are and what their requirements are, and the County will be trying to accommodate that.”