REGINA — Regina Police Service is reporting some positive news about their enforcement efforts and in the crime trends seen in the city.
According to the monthly crime overview for this past August, overall crime in the city is down 15.8 per cent compared to the same period a year ago. Total persons and property crimes year-to-date were at 8182, down from 9719 for the same period through August a year earlier.
Regina Police are reporting significant declines in crime against property, and reductions in reported break and enters (down 35.8 per cent) and thefts and attempted thefts of vehicles (down 23 and 45.3 per cent respectively). Crimes against the person are also down 13.7 per cent, due to what is described as substantial reductions in robberies (down 24.1 per cent) and assaults.
But there are some not so bright spots. One of them is the amount of arsons, which has been an ongoing concern for Regina Police for some time.
Those are up 5.4 per cent from the same period a year ago, with bin fires and vehicle fires driving the increase.
In her presentation to the board Acting Police Chief Lorilee Davies pointed to challenges when it came to arson enforcement, because many times there aren’t any witnesses to what happened.
“Our largest driver in arsons are the bin fires,” Davies told reporters. “Obviously, somebody thinks it's a good idea to start a garbage bin on fire. Those are quite often witness-less crimes. It occurs in a back alley at nighttime. We don't get a lot of reports to somebody calling that in in progress. And so it is tricky for us to identify the people that are responsible and hold them accountable.”
Davies did say they have dedicated arson investigators monitoring people who have conditions or who have previously been charged with arsons, to ensure they are abiding by those conditions.
“But I think one of the big things that we can do, working collaboratively with the city, is if we see certain areas where we're getting a hot spot in those arsons, if we can get some increased garbage pickups in those alleys so that the bins aren't overflowing, then that takes away the opportunity. So I think that that's an easy, quick win for us, hopefully, and that'll do something to help those numbers trend in the right direction.”
Downtown update
Among the highlights of the police board meeting was an update on the progress of their Alternative Response Officers and Downtown Safety Team.
According to that update, since the program’s inception last year the ARO program has attended around 1838 calls for service, given 595 warnings, transported 259 people to the Complex Needs Shelter, 137 people to community shelters, provided medical assistance to 45 people and referred 25 people to other services.
As well they reported that the Downtown Safety Team, which consists of eight dedicated officers, had made around 2,000 business contacts with about half of those in Cornwall Centre, transported 61 prisoners, and attended over 110 community events. There has also been increasing requests for safety presentations to the business community in the downtown.
The AROs have only been in operation for a short period of time, since November of last year. Board members as well as Davies say the response from the public to the downtown efforts has been positive.
“I know the feedback we've had from businesses and from residents in the area are that they really are feeling safer in the downtown," said Davies.
"The visibility of our officers being out there, they're very approachable, they are providing that visible presence, which leads to obviously feelings of safety. We think it's been a really great program for downtown, and it has been well-received. They've attended literally thousands of calls for service since they've been out there less than a year now.”
Davies said it is their hope to “be able to work with board and city council to expand that program for 2026, because we think it does have a lot of good merit.”
