Thompson city council played host Sept. 17 to Insp. Kevin Lewis, officer in charge of the Thompson RCMP detachment, who presented them with crime statistics for the first quarter of the 2018−19 fiscal year (April, May and June).
He said that calls for service (compared to the same period the previous year) are up by 13.6 per cent.
Lewis went on to talk about how other activities such as harm reduction actions, impaired driving charges, damp house visits and drug warrant activations are also on the rise.
However, Lewis mentioned that these warrants mostly result in marijuana and cocaine seizures and that they’ve yet to discover fentanyl or methamphetamines.
Thompson RCMP officers are doing their best to respond to each call for service in a timely fashion but are sometimes swamped by the volume, said the inspector.
“We have 400-something calls per week, so when you’re talking 38 police officers and we only have probably six or seven on shift on a good day, then you think of all the chaos that goes on out there … it makes for a busy day.”
Coun. Duncan Wong asked Lewis about the legality of making a citizen’s arrest, especially in situations when a resident is witnessing vandalism or mischief on their property.
“It’s very tricky because you assume a lot of liability when you go to make a citizen’s arrest,” said Lewis. “The best thing to do is probably get your phone out, try to get a good picture of them or a video so we can ID them through an investigation.”
To read the RCMP’s quarterly report in full, please see the agenda on the city’s official website.
At the tail end of Monday’s presentation, Lewis also announced that he will no longer be in charge of the Thompson RCMP detachment starting Oct. 15.
Staff Sgt. Brian Edmonds from the Winnipeg RCMP will take over the position of inspector, and Lewis will move to Thompson’s Manitoba North District headquarters to serve as the district operations officer.
Lewis became inspector back in August 2016 after serving as staff sergeant in the Thompson detachment for two-and-a-half years.
The next council meeting is Oct. 1. It will be the second-last gathering of the current term before the Oct. 24 municipal election.
