/lightcatch/images/image-5a9e0.png "Lightcatch Logo for menu")
Every month I’m fortunate to meet with as many as 20 people from across Canada in a group called ‘Changemakers for Crime Prevention’. The members are a few police, some elected officials, crime prevention executives and some active volunteers.
I shared with the members yesterday how a recent theft victim I’ll call Jane, wanted help and why her approach is a big misunderstood problem. Jane emailed us at 10pm asking for help to get her stolen van on the app. She supplied a photo of the vehicle and mentioned where it was stolen from.
Jane was a Homecare Nurse who really needed her van for work! Every day it was missing was costing not just her, but the clients she worked for, a lot of stress and discomfort.
I can imagine many people hearing Jane’s story would be frustrated and dismayed about how crime is rampant in their town and how nothing is being done about it.
The next day about 11am, a new alert came on Lightcatch from Jane the way I had instructed her to do it. Less than 12 hours later, the vehicle was recovered over 80km away from where Jane lived. Wow! That was extremely fast. How did Jane’s vehicle get recovered so quickly, amongst the thousands of vehicles in Calgary, even though she reported it 36 hours after being stolen?
There are thousands of Jane’s every year who are victims of crime. The reasons why she was a victim of crime, are also completely misunderstood.
Once in awhile, partially in frustration, I’ve said;
“You RCMP, you just take everything people hit you with right on the chin. When people complain about a lack of response, and a lack of results you never push back or educate the public on the part they should be doing to help you do your jobs.”
This lack of feedback for people like Jane actually hurts the victims WAY more than people realize.
Thanks to the technology we have with Lightcatch, I have real clarity on this fundamental issue. It has also become crystal clear on how to stop it.
We also have a lot of proof this approach works…
During our first Changemaker meeting 13 months ago, I gave the members access to our internal company training documentation. The intent was to help every member get the same results we do for where they live. On Page 1 of the training manual I summarized three simple steps every member should take to lower crime in their region.
I then shared with the members the Cities and Counties where we as an Operations team supporting Lightcatch would be doing these three steps at in 2021. In other words, I was predicting where crime was going to be lowered.
The nice part is, we went and did it.
On a shoestring budget, we took this simple three step process, and turned the areas where we focus on into some of the lowest crime rates in the province.
We helped turn this for Jane
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into this
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in less than 12 hours.
On Page 1 of the training manual I summarized the three steps every member should take to lower crime in their region.
1) Put Suspicious or Criminal alerts on Lightcatch you see or hear about.
2) Reach out to the victims or witness.
3) Share the successes back out to social media.
I then shared with the members these were the regions where we were going to do these three steps for in 2021 ourselves. (The image below is ugly as it was just an internal training document done up quickly.)
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We decided to prove our theory.
The green areas would get the services we knew were needed.
• We would improve the descriptions of what the alert creators wrote.
• We would improve the quality of the images provided.
• We would followed up with creators and witnesses via email and phone.
• We would aggressively work to be sure the police were being updated if anything helpful came in.
Yellow, blank, and red areas we would only make sure the alert was legally compliant.
This would amount to hundreds of hours, much of it nights, evenings and weekends but we knew this formula was sound. Could it really be this simple?
1 Year Later
Over the course of 2021 some things changed along the way. The MD of Greenview and the County of Grande Prairie became Green areas after becoming our clients. The Lac Ste. Anne, Stettler and Mountain View areas kind of dropped off in importance.
One year later, the regions that supported our volunteer work the most, have the lowest crime rates.
Northern Sunrise County – Crime DOWN 50% year over year. Likely a leader provincially.
Parkland County, Spruce Grove, Stony Plain – The leader among peers in Alberta for a lower crime rate.
County of Grande Prairie – Safest 10% among peers.
Clearwater County – Significantly less crime in fall of 2021 versus peers after following similar path.
These aren’t some little 1 or 2% changes. These are major impacts in crime rates taking place wherever we focused. I know of other areas right next to these regions where crime increased over the last 12 months.
Did we win in every single area where we focused? Almost! There is one final driving force that can create change after all three of these steps are being done. It led me to share this new four step formula with Changemaker members.
1) Put Suspicious or Criminal alerts on Lightcatch. - What is created will be copied.
2) Reach out to the victims or witness.
3) Share the successes back out to social media.
4) The more policing and civic leaders support this message, the faster and better the results.
This four step process is something every taxpayer should demand be done immediately. It is simpler, more proven, and far cheaper than other options.
If you are a home or business owner and you don’t want to wait for some elected official to figure things out, you can get this same four step process, and better right now. It is far easier for us to help a property owner than a community. For homeowners we call it Crime Blocker.
If you want to know about how to protect your business or would like to learn more about the Changemakers group feel free to reach us at Contact.