ESTEVAN — The Estevan Police Service says it is conducting more patrols in the city’s east industrial area due to property crimes and thefts.
In an interview with SaskToday, Deputy Police Chief Warren Morrical said two vehicles have been reported as stolen from the east industrial area. That number doesn’t include snowmobile and quad thefts.
The EPS spent a lot of time focusing on the downtown area last year due to thefts, Morrical said, but now the EPS's attention has been partially diverted to the industrial area.
“We are finding a number of suspicious people and vehicles, break and enters into businesses, and property thefts,” Morrical said.
The industrial area includes the businesses on either side of Kensington Avenue between the railroad tracks. Morrical said it’s tough to pinpoint why there has been an increase in calls, but he suspects the warm spells this winter have been a factor.
“It makes it easier for people to come and go during the nighttime hours. Of course, it’s not 40 below. It’s not difficult for people to be out and about when it’s dark in those areas,” he said. “Certainly, I would suggest we have a number of people that are targeting that specific area, and the fact that there are vehicles and property that are left … they are targeting that area because those items are present, they’re accessible through criminal activity and nobody is around other than the police at night to monitor.”
The EPS wants to conduct patrols and be in the area as much as possible, observing and watching for suspicious individuals and vehicles at times when they don’t belong.
“We’re making contact with as many people as possible to identify both suspicious people or people that are potentially committing crimes down in that area,” said Morrical.
The deputy police chief also encourages people to ensure their property is secured when staff members are not present on work sites. He added they can make use of gates and locks on doors, and conduct walkthroughs on properties to ensure C-cans are not left unattended and unlocked.
“Security cameras are a great investment when it comes to business,” he said. “Quite often in these cases, if we were to have clear and visible surveillance footage from times when these do occur, it just gives us an additional level of evidence, an additional thing that we can investigate, and it does in fact help to identify individuals by way of us posting stills or videos of the crime in progress to prompt some evidentiary leads to help us figure out who these people are and bring them to justice.”
