Woodlands County is the safest it has been in five years, according to Barrhead RCMP Staff Sergeant Bob Dodds.
Dodds was at Woodlands County’s March 2 meeting to deliver the year-end crime statistics for the parts of Woodlands County that fall under Barrhead’s jurisdiction.
Dodds shared that there were 161 persons crimes in 2021, the lowest total in five years.
There were a few small spikes that caught Dodds’s eye. Extortion crimes were up slightly, as were uttering threats. Dodds chalked that up to COVID-19, and more people being at home and online. That led to more people sending threatening messages to each other over the internet.
Property crimes were also at their lowest in five years, although there were some upticks.
Dodds explained that there seems to be a lot of copper thefts, mostly from abandoned oil wells in the Fort Assiniboine area. According to Dodds, the geography of the region just makes it difficult to patrol.
“In years past, I’ve been out there at 2 o’clock in the morning myself,” said Dodds. “Driving around past Fort Assiniboine and even out to Goose Lake, you can drive around there for hours and not see a soul, and then you find out the next day that someone has been hitting a well-site.”
In total, the Barrhead RCMP investigated 892 Criminal Code offences in Woodlands County in 2021 — again, the lowest in five years. But Dodds wanted to emphasize that those are reported crimes.
“Often I am told, ‘Well I do not even phone the RCMP. I do not even tell you,’” explained Dodds. “That is consistent in every community I have ever policed in across two provinces. And my response to that is, ‘If you do not tell me about it, I cannot do anything about it.’”
