Private security contract in St. Paul extended to help curb crime

The town of St. Paul has extended a contract for private security to help manage crime in the small community northeast of Edmonton.

St. Paul council voted this month to extend its contract with RF Protection & K9 Services until the end of September.

Initially, the town opened the contract in March on a short-term-basis to "piggyback" on night patrols the company was already doing for local businesses.

Mayor Maureen Miller said the town saw a higher crime rate last spring and summer after it started an education campaign about reporting crime.

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"When we hired the K9 [company,] that was part of that [education] process coming into this summer," said Miller, adding that they didn't see much crime over the winter months.

Though overall crime is down in the community, Miller said, the rise in reports to police may be an effect of the education campaign.

Debby Hunter owns RF Protection & K9 Services. In an interview with CBC Radio's Edmonton AMon Monday, Hunter said their presence in town may have displaced crime elsewhere.

"Unfortunately that seems to have correlated with an increase in the crime in the outer areas [like] the municipality and other small towns in the area," she said.

Small town crime solutions

The issue of small-town crime has been a hot topic in Conklin, about 350 kilometres northeast of Edmonton.

A handful of people gathered Sunday night in the community to discuss how best to deal with property crime in the hamlet.

"We definitely need a satellite RCMP officer. We need full-time presence or at least semi-full-time presence," said Conklin resident Doug Miller.

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The oil and gas company owner said he hasopened 20 files with RCMP since 2016, but only one case has resulted in charges.

To mitigate break and enter on his work site, Miller's employees do overnight patrols.

Miller thinks part of the problem is that the nearestRCMP detachment is 140 kilometres away.

Property crime down in Alberta

The latest RCMP statistics show overall property crime outside of large metropolitan areas in Alberta has decreased by 6.8 per cent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2019.

• Crime rates higher in rural Canada especially on the Prairies, StatsCan says

Brian Holden, deputy mayor of Bon Accord, said histown relies on the RCMP detachment in Morinville, about 15 minutes away.

Holden said the town,about 40 kilometres north of Edmonton, hasn't seen an increase in crime but pays for extra policing from the Morinville detachment throughout the year.

"Rural crime for us is up and down," he said. "We tend to get a spat of crimes like vehicle break-ins, stealing batteries and stealing stuff out of people's yards. We see very little of the bigger crimes like break and enter."

RCMP said statistics on rural property crime will up updated later this week.