Courtesy: Bob Schneider

By Jessie Weisner

DOWNTOWN FOOT PATROL

Downtown foot patrol continuing into 2020

Sep 27, 2019 | 4:20 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — The Medicine Hat Police downtown patrol initiative will continue on into next summer, with a few tweaks.

The program began in June 5 as a way to make people feel safer in the downtown area.

The program involves four officers from the Priority Street Crimes Unit patrolling the downtown area on foot. They engage with the public and watch out for anyone causing a problem.

Inspector Brent Secondiak says overall it’s been a success, but some changes need to be made, such as how and when officers are deployed.

RECAP

Week in review: Truth and reconciliation in Medicine Hat, Smith at cities conference

22h ago

At Medicine Hat's Kom Mo Taan, people find healing

Sep 27, 2024

WHAT'S ON

Here is what's on for National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Medicine Hat

Sep 27, 2024

He says deploying officers from the Priority Street Crimes Unit created a gap in services, so the kind of officers and the hours they’re deployed will likely change.

“It will probably be different hours, we found this year that the greatest need was kind of day time hours, early into the evening,” he says. “There was no point working late at night because there was really no calls and no people down there.”

He adds having patrols in downtown may have pushed crime to other areas of the city, so they’ll work on making changes to address that issue.

“We also noticed there was an increase in property crimes in surrounding areas so it likely displaced some of the downtown crimes to areas on the southeast hill for example,” he says. “So we’re going to look at ensure that that doesn’t happen elsewhere in the city because of displacement of crime in the downtown core.”

Secondiak is currently creating a report on the findings of the initiatives first year. It’s likely to be released in the next month.

The downtown patrols are still out on the streets, but will wrap up soon.

“It will be done in the next few weeks here, so typically the winter months are quieter for different types of crime, not as much transient crime. It tends to be more confined to residences or businesses in the winter months.”