BONNYVILLE – The Bonnyville RCMP want to hear from residents who have any comments, questions or concerns on policing in their jurisdiction.
Anyone from the Town and MD of Bonnyville, Village of Glendon, Fort Kent, La Corey, Iron River, Therien, and Kehewin Cree Nation are being asked by the local detachment to provide feedback.
“This past year, one of our main priorities for the RCMP here in Bonnyville was to ensure that we had enough community engagement in place,” detailed Bonnyville RCMP Sgt. Kim Hillier. “We got feedback from our partners and stakeholders about how we’re doing and what they wanted to see us do or our areas of focus that they want us to look at.”
Typically, the RCMP hosts town halls that invite people to provide feedback to them in person and ask questions, but those have been put on hold due to the pandemic. This is the local RCMP’s second time hosting a virtual town hall since the pandemic began and Hillier noted the first one was deemed a success.
“S/Sgt. Sarah Parke got some good responses and she responded to some great questions and concerns. She took her top six and responded to those, they were then published and sent out to various areas,” Hillier recalled, adding she anticipates receiving similar responses this time around.
“They tend to be very personal and focused. If there’s been some interaction with criminal activities or if there have been issues with speeding in a certain neighbourhood, these are generally the concerns that we hear.”
Last year, there were a number of issues Parke heard from residents, such as RCMP response times, traffic concerns, a request for more visibility in Glendon and Kehewin Cree Nation, high-risk intersections, impaired drivers, among others.
These events assist the RCMP in addressing areas of concern in the jurisdiction, and gives them the chance to inform people about the increase in patrols in those areas if residents aren’t aware.
“We want to make sure that we’re touching on those areas that are of most concern."
According to Hillier, the RCMP continues to host these events even though they can’t be done face-to-face because "we don’t want to lose touch with the people that we serve."
She continued, “We want to make sure that even in these trying times with these restrictions and difficulties that we’ve seen over the past year, we still want people to know that we’re here, we’re policing, we’re responding to every call that comes in, and we want to ensure that they have a venue to voice concerns and ideas that they can just get out there. It’s not based on a complaint or an issue at hand, maybe it’s something that they’ve noticed, maybe an increase in speeders in their area or they’ve noticed an increase in petty crimes or some suspicious vehicles in the area. That sort of thing and they just want to let us know.”
Residents have until the end of the month to submit their questions or concerns to the Bonnyville RCMP through email at [email protected] or directly to the detachment at 4515 54th Ave.
Hillier said she’s trying to figure out the best way to share the top questions and answers being posed.
“I’d like to do something a little bit different from last year. We’ve come a long way from the first part of COVID-19. We do a lot of streams and live talks on Zoom and that sort of thing. I’ll look into what we can do after we get all the questions.”
