SASKATOON – It measures the amount of crime occurring in our city and the efficacy of the police service response. On Wednesday, the 2015 Annual Report Card for the Saskatoon Police Service (SPS) was released and the results are mediocre.
Initially the service had received a 7.25 out of 10 in 2015 on the report card but the records management system isn’t set up to collect the number of tickets handed out by officers as part of the combined traffic unit with RCMP.
The overall report card rating jumped, once 3,400 written tickets were accounted for, to 8.25 out of 10 for 2015.
While it’s not the lowest rating the service has received in the last five years, it’s certainly not the highest:
- 2011 – 8.5 out of 10
- 2012- 9 out of 10
- 2013- 9.5 out of 10
- 2014- 7.5 out of 10
Crime was down in every single category for last year but there are were a few problematic areas.
“What is driving a lot of it is the crime here in Saskatoon, we’ve seen a big increase in stolen autos, theft under, weapons charges,” said SPS Chief Clive Weighill.
“The dynamics associated with methamphetamine and fentanyl are really causing a problem a problem right across western Canada.”
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Crystal meth is a highly addictive drug that only takes three or four times to get a person hooked.
“Once you’re addicted the only thing you’re worried about is getting more meth,” said Chief Weighill.
“That’s where we’re seeing a lot of the thefts occur in break and enters.”
In 2015, the service failed to meet its goal in regards to response times related to priority one and priority four calls.
Only 61 percent of the time officers responded within 12 minutes to a priority one call, compared to the service’s goal of 80 per cent. The goal for priority four calls is for officers to respond 80 per cent of the time within 70 minutes; SPS members met this goal 69 per cent of the time.
“I think it’s more of a statistical anomaly that we’re looking at here rather than a reality so at this point in time we seem to be getting to the calls as we always have in the past. We’re going to dig into this a bit deeper and just ensure it’s not just a statistical issue, do we have an issue or not?”
The chief also noted that priority one calls are reserved for things like assisting an officer, a homicide or other serious incidents. Two years ago that changed adding several “in progress” calls to the list.
“Sexual assault in progress, assault itself in progress, a lot of those physically violent crimes we try to get those into the priority one now which were a priority two,” said the chief.
The good news from the report; crimes against people were down overall and the number of complaints against police from the public was also down.
“We’ve got a good system here in the province to report police misconduct, most of the complaints that we do get are rudeness, maybe an inadequate investigation.”
Any areas of concern will be covered as part of an operational review set to be complete in December. That will include a look at the organization from top to bottom to see if more staff need to be added or if there is a more effective way of doing certain things to strengthen the service and the protection it provides.
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