November was a very typical month, according to the Drayton Valley RCMP.
Drayton Valley RCMP Staff Sergeant Erin Matthews paid a visit to Drayton Valley town council on Dec. 22 to deliver the crime statistics for November.
From January through November of 2021, property crimes are down by 27 per cent, persons crimes up by six per cent, and other criminal code offences down by nine per cent.
Matthews did take a moment, however, to highlight some of the statistics she deemed noteworthy.
Damage to property charges made a dramatic increase, from 10 in Nov. 2020 to 24 in Nov. 2021. Matthews pointed out that most of those calls came from the schools, as students have been damaging school property to make videos for TikTok.
“We are looking at actually going in there and having some meetings with the students in the New Year, and giving them some information that this type of stuff is not what you should be doing and the possible consequences,” said Matthews.
This led councillor Tom McGee to ask where the school resource officers are.
Matthews replied that the Drayton Valley RCMP’s school resource officer left in September, and the new one is scheduled to start in February. In the meantime, Matthews has each of her members assigned to a certain school in the Drayton Valley RCMP’s jurisdiction, and it has been working out so far, according to Matthews.
It caught councillor Bill Ballas’s eye that wellbeing checks had a dramatic spike. There were 77 in Nov. 2020, but 117 in Nov. 2021.
Matthews attributes that to the ongoing pandemic.
“We have people who are, ‘Hey, I have not heard from them in a couple of weeks, they usually call me all the time,’ so we hunt them down, check on them, make sure they are okay, and it is usually that they just do not want to talk to that person,” explained Matthews.
Matthews wrapped things up by saying that November’s statistics offered up no surprises.
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