When it comes to issues of criminal justice, the RCMP have worked with the City of Thompson and other local organizations to set a series of shared priorities.
"Through consultation with the publics safety committee, MKO, KTC, MMF, and the detachment, we set five priorities," explained Insp. Ken Poulsen, the head of Thompson's RCMP, adding that the priorities are all weighted equally. "Those priorities are gangs, drugs, domestic violence, youth at risk, and the downtown strategy, which is to deter public intoxication and liquor consumption in the downtown core."
It is on that last priority - alcohol in the downtown - where Poulsen has the strongest message for the community.
"There are many concerns raised by the community on public intoxication and consumption of liquor in the downtown core," he said. "Everybody has an active role in the downtown strategy, and the role of the police is to deter public intoxication and liquor consumption."
"The easy access to liquor in the downtown core has to be shored up," continued Poulsen. "Pay attention to closures - if the liquor commission chooses to suspend licences, those are the ones I want to take a look at. We need to bring them on board. Over this coming year, what I want to work at through our commitment to the downtown strategy is building stronger partnerships, developed to eliminate easy access to liquor. I feel it is important that we have to look at the root causes, and work with identified liquor outlets that do not have proper controls in place. They, too, need to take ownership and responsibility to some of this problem."
In each of the first two weekends in April, over 100 people were lodged in RCMP holding cells for alcohol-related offences, a statistic Poulsen calls "troubling." Still, Poulsen says, he wants the public to realize that not everybody in the downtown is breaking any sort of law.
"Even with that large number of incarcerations, people still feel the downtown area is largely out of control," he said. "I want to educate the public and inform the community that not all persons in the downtown core are breaking any law. They're there to socialize and visit."
"Our members have been to financial institutions early in the morning to remove people from the vestibules - out of a large number of people in a vestibule, there's only been one person arrested and brought back for being intoxicated in a public place," noted Poulsen, who also said that the creation of the long-rumoured detox centre would be welcomed by the RCMP.
On the issue of at-risk youth, Poulsen says there's a lot of work to be done, but also draws attention to two community programs, which he says, have been working well - Street Reach North and Youth At-Risk North (YARN).
YARN, which was modeled after a similar program in Selkirk, was the brainchild of Addictions Foundation of Manitoba regional director John Donovan. It brings together stakeholders such as the Boys and Girls Club and RCMP to ensure that resources are available to at-risk youth in an effective and timely manner. Street Reach North, meanwhile, employs two outreach workers to work with youth who are unsupervised on the streets.
The RCMP have also completed a community situation assessment for Thompson - a document which combines statistical information on crimes, information on funding partners, and information on current youth initiatives to create a comprehensive package of information on Thompson youth in the justice system. "We've done much work, but I feel there's much more work to be done - and that's engaging the youth," said Poulsen.
On the subject of illicit drugs, Poulsen says the RCMP have made progress: "We've had good success in prosecuting persons trafficking in drugs. I've seen an increase of 19 per cent overall in drug-related charges, and of those I've seen a 14 per cent increase in the number of persons that have been prosecuted for trafficking-related offences." (Those numbers are for the 2010-11 year compared to 2009-10.)
"There is no one cell that is totally responsible for the drug trade in Thompson now, like what we saw a number of years ago," noted Poulsen. "It's a lot of independent people - it's not a nucleus now."
"The gangs are always important to be focused on, especially with our youth," he continued. "The best way to combat our gang issues is with crime prevention and intervention. We're working with the kids, and we have a lot of good partners - with the schools, with Ma-Mow-We-Tak and their initiatives, with the Boys and Girls Club, working with youth and trying to find positive lifestyles."
On the last priority, domestic violence, Poulsen said that his focus for the next year is on enhanced data collection and analysis so that the RCMP can get a clearer picture of exactly what the domestic violence situation is in Thompson. "We continually look at this and work in conjunction with the Crown prosecution office to ensure that our investigations and our prosecutions are going before the court for domestic violence and related offences."
This summer will see one major difference in the number of law enforcement uniforms downtown - for the first time since 2006, Prairie Bylaw Enforcement will not be in Thompson. Poulsen, however, says that he hasn't seen any major differences since the group left town last August.
"I don't see any difference in trends in the number of people being incarcerated," he noted. "Prairie Bylaw moved people along from loitering - that's the biggest difference I see. Calls for service, number of people being incarcerated, I see no difference. They moved people on."
