Priorities, RCMP presence being pondered by Vauxhall council

By Nikki Jamieson
Taber Times
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Before their next meeting, Vauxhall town council was asked to start considering their policing priorities for the local RCMP detachment.

With the fiscal year-end being April 1, RCMP Sgt. Stewart Gemmill requested Vauxhall council to start thinking about their priorities for the Taber-Vauxhall RCMP to focus on in the upcoming year before their next meeting.

Priorities for the 2024-2025 fiscal year were family violence, visibility within the community and participation in community events and traffic and road safety through enforcement and education. When asked if their goals were met during the RCMP delegation of Vauxhall council’s regular Feb. 18 meeting, Gemmill said he thought they did a good job.

“I don’t think there were any months that I reported where we weren’t participating in some sort of community event, doing with some group,” said Gemmill. “Traffic safety, I said we’d average at 30 (tickets). Obviously, the winter months are a little lower than the summer months. Right now, we’re returning at 32 traffic tickets a month, which is pretty good, with everything else we’ve got on our plate, with the investigations we have.”

Gemmill said that he liked the priority on increasing visibility and participating in community event as well as the focus on traffic safety, as they were the “two biggest things that communities like”. On the family violence side, the town has had the department on that for two years in a row. They are seeing an increase in property crimes, so Gemmill suggested that council may want to consider making that a priority for the next year.

When asked how often they patrolled Highway 36, Gemmill said they do so nearly every day, but they usually had only one person working at a time.

“Keep in mind that when you only have one person working at a time, it gets tough to be everywhere at once,” said Gemmill. “Traffic is a major issue for us, and all our councils have identified it as a priority. It’s just tough to be everywhere at the same time.”

Gemmill said they had had someone look at their resource levels, and the Taber-Vauxhall detachment wasn’t identified as needing an additional person working based on call volume. He knew that Vulcan County – which the Taber-Vauxhall detachment patrols a part of – does want the Vulcan RCMP to patrol their entire municipality, as currently, multiple detachments patrol different parts of the county. So while at some point, they may not need to patrol their portion of Vulcan County anymore, but it won’t have an impact on their portion.

Coun. Russell Norris asked if they can request another officer from the province. Gemmill said that if they were a municipal contract, they could, as the municipality would be paying for it.

“As a provincial (detachment), we’re kind of guided by what the province says.”

Mayor Kimberley Cawley said they had looked into getting extra and priority policing, including the cost of an additional RCMP officer for the town, and there was high costs involved. Gemmill noted if they were looking for a CPO program, both the Village of Barnwell and the M.D. of Taber had contracted the community standards unit with the Taber Police Service to do their bylaw, and while he didn’t know the costs involved with that, it was something the town could look into. He could also look into the cost of getting an additional RCMP officer for the area, and if it was a priority for them, they could speak with the commanding officer before they went to their next Alberta Municipality Association meeting.

Council passed a motion to receive the report for information.