NOTES FROM CRIME ISSUES MEETING 10/01/12
The KNA meeting on crime issues was attended by a crowd of about eighty people including residents and business owners. The police in attendance were Acting Inspector Mark Cox, supervisor, Sgt.Scott Moreton, the new crime manager for Ward 1, a local beat officer, Ryan Komadowski and Sgt. Steve Mahler of the Crime Prevention Unit.
It was stressed that any incident of possible crime should be reported to the non emergency number 905-546-4952. For example, if your car has been entered and searched but nothing taken, report it. This helps police to establish patterns in the area. When you call, be as descriptive as possible describing why what you are seeing seems suspicious. Trespassing of any kind should be reported to Sgt Morton e.g. people coming onto your property searching for empty bottles.
There is a four pronged program currently addressing commercial crime in our neighbourhood: the BEAR unit (Break and Enter), plainclothes officers working with the BEAR unit, the regular beat officers and the ACTION team, including the mounted unit. There will be more nighttime surveillance particularly for business areas. There was recently a successful project called ‘Just Clause’ addressing theft from autos and the results will be available soon.
The objective of crime prevention is to make places tough targets. Therefore, people are advised to leave nothing in their cars including gps, cd’s, insurance etc. Sgt. Mahler also told of a free program by Crime Prevention that will send an officer to your home or business to advise on security issues, again focusing on making your buildings difficult to enter. There is a volunteer program called Operation Safeguard where Auxillary members of the police force will attend an area with a “break-in” problem and go door to door promoting free residential security audits. You may email our crime manager Sgt. Scott Moreton and provide as much detail as you can about the problem you are experiencing to make use of this service. Be sure to phone any incident to the non-emergency line as listed above or to the emergency line if appropriate.
We are happy to report that there was an arrest on Jan. 11th in Kirkendall concerning the commercial entries. The investigation is ongoing and further charges are expected Thanks so much to the officers worked on this project.
Gina Taylor wrote:
I was unable to attend this meeting but did attend the fall AGM. As I stated at this meeting, we all need to take ownership of our immediate neighbourhood, e.g. city block. Pick up litter, know your neighbours, be visible, walk around, deal with anti social behaviour directly (loud music, dog barking, etc) where safe to do so. Criminals like privacy and when we cocoon inside our homes, this is exactly what we are giving them.
Posted 23 Jan 2012 at 4:34 pm ¶