By Erika Rolling

RCMP

Specialized Grande Prairie RCMP unit for sexual and domestic violence transitions to full time

May 11, 2022 | 12:42 PM

The Alberta RCMP has established a Special Investigative Unit at Grande Prairie’s RCMP detachment to focus on investigating sexual assault and domestic violence.

The SIU is within the Grande Prairie RCMP General Investigative Section, which is taking the primary role of handling complex sexual occurrences that are high risk and violent.

Corporal Lianne Bilodeau of the GIS – SIU Grande Prairie says the team started as a pilot project in September 2020.

“Due to the number of files that we were taking on and helping the watch, it alleviated the time constraints for them because they’re constantly responding to incoming calls.”

“At the six-month mark, we actually solidified it into a full-time unit. So we actually became full-time sooner than the one-year initial,” says Cpl. Bilodeau.

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Grande Prairie has one of the highest reported sexual and domestic violence occurrence rates in Alberta for an RCMP jurisdiction.

“When we ran statistics for the province we did it over a five-year time frame and basically ran it for all the different RCMP jurisdictions within Alberta, especially for the bigger ones such as Grande Prairie, Fort McMurray and Red Deer.”

Cpl. Bilodeau noted, “Grande Prairie had the highest domestic violence rate when we ran the stats and Red Deer had a little bit higher for sexual offences.”

Within the year-long pilot project timeline, SIU took on 227 service calls, which turned out to be for 148 sexually-based offences and 48 domestic violence offences.

Also in the first 12 months of the SIU in Grande Prairie, 2,212 domestic violence files and 214 sexual offence files were investigated and completed.

The GIS -SIU Grande Prairie assists neighbouring detachments with files needing their expertise and specialized training in interviewing.

“We have taken child forensic interviewing courses so that we have a more sensitive approach to interview children, we also do trauma-informed training and other types of specialized training in order of us to not only acknowledge and know the needs of these kinds of survivors but also make our investigations more client-centered and trauma-informed.”

There are currently eight RCMP members in the SIU for sexual and domestic violence; two corporals and six constables

“With the number of file numbers we were taking on and investigating, upper management in our detachment agreed there needed to be more employees from the initial one corporal and four constables,” Cpl. Bilodeau says.

The unit works closely with Children Services, Caribou/PACE Centre, Victim Services, Probations Office, Odyssey House, the Crown Prosecutors Office and other community services in the city and area that tend to victims.

“There are no actual time limitations on when these kinds of crimes can be reported, so if people have gone through it themselves or are aware of other people that are… it can be reported at any time.”

If you are a survivor of, or witness to, sexual or domestic violence or any criminal activity, please report it to the local police or contact your nearest community-based Victim Services agency for appropriate support and to learn about your reporting options.