Prairie By-Law Enforcement (PBLE) owner Dave Prudhomme paid a visit to Thompson on Aug 13 to present the company’s stats for their work in July.

Staggering numbers coupled with some sloppy math have brought the stats in to question, and Prudhomme’s bumbling responses did little to instil confidence in the legitimacy of the numbers with Council members.

The full statistics report can be viewed on-line at the City of Thompson’s website, but some glaring numbers include the numbers for open liquor and drunk & disorderly conduct.

Reports for open liquor have increased in leaps and bounds since PBLE arrived in town on the May long weekend. The month of May (May 18-31) showed 399 incidents of open liquor, June 1,201 and July the number jumped up to 1,529.

In total, 3,129 incidents of open liquor have been reported, according to PBLE’s stats sheet however, their reports add up to a total of 3,439, a difference of 310.

Forget for a moment the fact that it appears that PBLE uses an abacus to tally their stats rather than a calculator; really digest that figure of 1,529 open liquor reports in July. At that rate, PBLE would have been reporting close to 50 open liquor incidents every single day.

Drunk and Disorderly incidents took another jump in July, from 54 in May to 139 in June and now to 179 most recently for a grand total of 372, or by PBLE’s calculations 395.

The discrepancies in the numbers go on and on: Loitering reports were 302 in May, 1,149 in June, and 890 in July for a total of 2,341, or as the PBLE total reports, 2,393.

The conspiracy theorist may claim that the stats are being juked in some way, the realist would likely just say that Prudhomme’s staff is sub-par with basic addition; regardless of the stance you take, the numbers do present an air of questionability.

Coun. Luke Robinson brought up the errors to Prudhomme during the Aug. 13 meeting, citing an addition error that many grade school students wouldn’t make.

“I’m looking at this urinating and defecating in public category and it says six cases in May, three in June, three in July, that adds up to 12,” said Robinson, “now on your report you have the total at 15, and going through there are a number of errors like this.”

Prudhomme paused and looked down at his statistics as if it was his first time seeing them and responded to Robinson in a less than convincing manner.

“Oh, I see that yes,” said Prudhomme, “ok well I guess I’ll have to take another look at these numbers.”

City Council voted back in April to spend $236,500 pus GST to bring PBLE to town in an effort to clean up the downtown area. According to the numbers presented they’ve been hard at work, whether the numbers are legitimate or not remains in question.