The majority of vehicles stolen in the Williams Lake area in July have not been recovered, said Insp. Warren Brown during a six month crime stats update to city council Tuesday.
Of the 12 vehicles stolen in July, 75 per cent have not been located, whereas 95 per cent of vehicles stolen between January and June were located.
Typically that means they’ve been dumped in remote areas and will probably be found during hunting season or spring when people are getting out into the bush, Brown explained.
“Many of the vehicles that have been stolen we find there to be a tie between ourselves and the Alexis Creek detachment,” Brown said explaining the two detachments are working together on some strategies.
In other stats, the calls for service in the first six months were up from 2012 but down from numbers in earlier years, with 5,050 in 2013 compared to 4,900 in 2012.
The numbers of break and enters to businesses and residents and thefts from vehicle are down from 2012, as is mischief.
“This year’s the lowest year we’ve had in the last number of years for mischief, so as far as property crimes go we’re slightly down or status quo.”
Domestic violence reports are down from 66 in 2012 to 53 in 2013, although Brown said that only reflects the numbers that are being reported to police.
“It’s a difficult category to accurately capture because what’s actually occurring.”
To tackle its strategic priorities, Brown said the detachment each watch and section has been assigned certain priorities.
“We’ve given them specific tasks and the whole detachment continues to work on our prolific offender program.”
Some watches and sections are working specifically with youth, others are working intelligence and surveillance-led projects, in areas of the city identified as higher in crime.
Recently the detachment purchased some new mountain bikes for patrols.
“You’ll see or perhaps not see the police on bikes out there,” Brown said. “Not only do we tend to have police out on the streets during the day, but we also have them out at night in those high crime areas.”
The RCMP have also been working more closely with the city’s bylaw officers to clamp down on houses the RCMP get called to repeatedly for noisy parties and other “unruly” behaviour.
“We’re working with the city bylaw officers to see what we can do to deter that behaviour.”
They’ve also worked with second hand and pawn shops to “cut the head off the dragon” to identify stolen property, Brown said.
Crack shacks continue to be the target of the general investigation section.
“I’ve said this in the past that anyone involved with the illicit drug trade shouldn’t be surprised if their door has been kicked down.”
Around 15 prolific offenders commit most of the crime in Williams Lake, Brown said.
“Many of them are in jail, many have moved out of the community, and the ones who haven’t moved out are laying low and we don’t know where they are.”
If they are indoors and laying low, that’s good news. There’s been a real community effort to work with prolific offenders to move on with their lives, he added.