Police service plans to ramp up community engagement to build more trust says Nogier
Prince Albert Police Chief Patrick Nogier said the organization is willing to take a look at how crime is reported in Prince Albert after hearing concerns residents may not be reporting criminal activity when in happens.
Mayor Bill Powalinsky and other members of council raised concerns during Tuesday’s Board of Police Commissioners meeting. They said some residents are saying they won’t report crime because they feel it won’t make a difference or will lead to a reprisal.
During a media scrum after the meeting, Nogier said those were “very concerning comments to hear” and that the Prince Albert Police Service would take that feedback and review their crime reporting mechanisms.
“The reporting mechanism, you can navigate through it with some ease, (and) it does provide the information that we need to get accurate statistics on location and types of crimes that are occurring,” Nogier told reporter. “However, because it makes sense to us doesn’t mean it really makes sense to the community, so we need to get more engagement and more feedback from the community.”
The concern that too many crimes weren’t being reported came up twice during Tuesday’s meeting. The first came during the discussion over the department’s Strategic Plan, which included the goal of increasing public trust and building relationships.
The second came during a discussion about the soon to be released crime stats report for 2024, which showed a decreased in several crimes, including property crime. During the meeting, Coun. Tony Head asked Nogier if that could possibly be due to a lack of reporting, instead of a drop in criminal activity.
“Those are very concerning comments to hear that the public was voicing some concern or frustration with the way that information could be sent to the police service, so we will take that back and we will take a look at it,” Norgier said afterwards.
Nogier said the police service has tried to get out to community meetings in 2024 to meet face-to-face with residents and address these concerns. He said they plan to do that again in 2025.
He also said they plan to worker more closely with local RCMP detachments and forge better relationships with Indigenous leaders. However, he also said if there is frustration about the response to criminal reports, the police service would review how things are done.
During the meeting, Mayor Bill Powalinsky said many residents told him during the last mayor campaign that reporting crime didn’t matter because nothing was going to be done about it. Reprisals were also a concern.
“I know I’ve talked to people who’ve said, ‘we’ve got a drug house in our neighbourhood.’ I said, ‘well, have you reported it?’ ‘Well no, they’ll know I’ve ratted them out.’ I’m thinking, ‘well, how will they know,’ but that’s the fear, and that’s the thing that holds them back,” Powalinsky said. “I don’t know if there’s a way the public perception can change in terms of reporting. I think there’s this latent amount of activity that we’re not able to capture because of either the … belief that it doesn’t matter to report something and secondly, the fear of reprisal.”
The 2025 crime stats presented at Tuesday’s meeting showed mostly positive news for Prince Albert, as the number of people who were victims of crime significantly decreased.
Nogier said that’s one of several positive takeaways from the numbers.
“Seeing a reduction in those (incidents) that pose a significant risk to the community is nothing but a positive takeaway, and on that is making sure we do have the appropriate resources to keep that trend going and providing the community with some indication that, when they call, we can provide the services that they can rely on.”
@kerr_jas • jason.kerr@paherald.sk.ca
