Why Homeowners Should Know Where Their Community Crime Rate Ranks

An RCMP officer emailed me with an introduction “I’d like you to meet Sheila, she is from xxxxx Town and is going to be looking after crime prevention. Sheila would like to be part of the meetings every month.”

Guess how many emails Sheila replied to? (zero)
Guess how many meetings Sheila attended? (zero)
Guess whose community now has one of the worst crime rates in the province over the last three months? (Sheila’s!).

Sheila obviously wasn’t like the rest of us. I don’t mean in attitude. I mean in how well she was paid. Sheila’s role actually involved getting paid to respond to emails and attending crime prevention meetings. The rest of us weren’t like her, because most of us were attending as volunteers.

I see and talk to people like Sheila on a weekly basis.

Sheila’s profit margin on the wage she is paid for as a Councillor actually goes UP by not attending meetings. Saying she cares about crime prevention gets the Councillor role and renumeration when it comes to the election. Not attending meetings after she is elected, increases her profits per hour.

These are some of the reasons why I think every single home owner can be helped by knowing how the crime rate in their community compared to other communities just like them during June.

It would make sense that the high crime places need to copy what the low crime areas are doing to improve their results. Especially when they all have the same laws, are in the same geography, have similar populations and have almost identical economics.

The few factors left that explain why some areas are very safe, while others have high crime, often come down to poor leadership and or poor community engagement.

By comparing the crime rate where you live with other crime rates, it become clearer who is good at community safety and who may be a ‘Sheila’. By this I mean someone who is talking a good game, but may actually be benefiting by doing nothing. (Forgive me for using the name Sheila, that wasn’t her real name and I had to use something.)

One the other hand there are people like Daniel and Geoff. I’m probably not supposed to mention them, but those two are forces of nature. They can influence hundreds, even thousands of people around them, to lead the entire province in community safety.

Daniel offered to help other places learn their best practices. Guess how many wanted to know how to make their communities a much better place to live? (zero, but we’re hopeful this will change)

If you haven’t seen the crime rate for your community and compared it to other locations we’ve created a post showing the status of almost 100 Cities, Towns and Counties across Alberta in June.

There is also another post showing the 90 day trend.

If you know homeowner’s who say they don’t like the crime that has happened to them, remember Sheila. The way for them to see a safer community is to effectively be communicating to the public about suspicious activity on Lightcatch and to be reporting that activity to the local police immediately. Like the saying ‘Talk is cheap’, talk rarely makes anyone’s property much safer, actions do.

Let me know what you think. 

It would make sense that the high crime places need to copy what the low crime areas are doing to improve their results.