Cochrane RCMP Inspector Lauren Weare and Sergeant Darleen White presented municipal crime stats from 2016 to Cochrane Council at the end of June.

While Inspector Weare was happy to report that crime was down in many areas in comparison to 2015; Weare did say our ratio of officers to citizens is low. 

Cochrane currently has 1 officer to 1315 citizens, and the average is more like one to 800/900 residents. With calls increasing year after year, the importance of being ahead of criminal behavior is important to Weare. "A long range policing strategy is to identify emerging crime and crime trends instead of waiting until we see a pattern over a period of months. Focusing on strategically deploying our resources to target those who commit the most amounts of crime within the community of Cochrane. Identifying emerging crime trends and locations so we can shift our focus as opposed to waiting until the phone rings. The plan being to interrupt crime as it is occurring."

Another area that Weare will continue to work on is sharing cross jurisdiction information. With released criminals coming into Cochrane, Weare says she wants to make sure criminals are being compliant with their release orders.

Mayor Ivan Brooker did acknowledge that in order for Weare to achieve her goals that staffing requests will need to be looked at. 

Similar sized communities to Cochrane, shares Weare, have a municipal employee working as a Criminal Intelligence Analyst who spends time reviewing files not just in one particular municipality but across the jurisdiction. "That person reviews all the files they are able to identify not just in Cochrane but they can identify those cross jurisdictional folks and emerging crime trends and targets that we need to focus on specifically."

Cochrane currently has 20 regular members. In 2016 the detachment received 18,702 calls, with 7,911 pertaining directly to Cochrane.

Councillor Morgan Nagel shared his personal thoughts and wondered from a council perspective what can be done to keep the community safe. "I personally believe keeping people is safe is the most important thing for the government to do."

Inspector Weare will be working on pulling resources to create a Crime Reduction Unit and a multi year plan that includes 5 additional members. "For me it's about a building a team that's not going to be pulled away to deal when the phone rings. They need to be target specific and offender focused, that is what we need to modernize the policing strategies for Cochrane. We are big enough now that we cannot run from call to call; we are not effective and we are not efficient."

Criminal record checks were also up 16.2% over 2015 placing an additional demand on staffing requirements.