It’s been a disappointing start to the year for many in our community from a crime perspective.
We’ve already seen people charged for drug-related crimes and thefts.
The issues with drugs in the community are well-documented, especially when it comes to methamphetamines over the past 18 months. Estevan is not alone when it comes to this situation; other communities across the province are facing a similar problem. Meth is cheap, it’s highly addictive and it seems to be accessible.
It’s also a nasty drug that can carry significant consequences for those who are looking for their next high.
And as long as there are problems associated with any illegal drug in a community, you’ll find other crimes, such as thefts or assaults.
The rise in thefts, particularly mail thefts, is also troubling. You might want to write it off and say “well, it’s only mail that was taken” in many of these incidents. But the theft of mail can result in identity theft, which is much more than just a nuisance for the victim. People have to worry about cheques arriving, or whether their identity has been compromised, or whether their credit card number or social insurance number has been stolen.
And they might not know they were a victim of a theft, since they don’t know their mail was stolen until it’s much too late.
Perhaps the most peculiar case of all, however, came last week when someone apparently climbed onto a second floor apartment balcony twice in one night to steal some items. It’s certainly rare to see that in police reports.
Who knows how many of these recent theft incidents are connected. We just sympathize with the problems that these incidents cause, the impact they can have on victims and the tension they create for so many in the community.
There was hope that the arrest of a Weyburn man earlier this month would bring an end to these thefts, but they continued.
Despite an uptick in meth use and thefts, we should still feel safe in our own city, and in this region.
We see it in the numbers. Yes, the number of calls for the Estevan Police Service is up, but the Criminal Code charges are down, and Estevan’s ranking on the federal Crime Severity Index for 2017 and 2018 was among the lowest it’s been since the data was tracked locally for the first time decades ago.
We have a pretty good police force and an engaged community that is willing to report something that seems out of the ordinary.
And in the end, we have pretty good people in this city. It’s a small fraction of the community that generates a lot of the calls for the Estevan Police Service.
Ditto the Estevan RCMP. They’re busy, and they’re trying to cover a large area with a relatively small number of officers, but they will tell you that most of the people in the municipalities they cover are pretty good, honest folks who obey the laws.
There’s always going to be crime, and these crimes often come in cycles. We’ll have a rash of thefts in a relatively short period of time, and then the focus will shift to something else.
There were problems with vehicle thefts in 2018 and vandalism incidents last spring. It’s unfortunate, but it has a knack for playing out that way.
And we are only as safe as we feel. Sure, we have to take precautions, such as locking our homes when we’re not home, and our vehicles when they are left unattended, particularly at night, but that’s just common sense.
We should still feel safe when walking through any part of Estevan, even at night.
It’s completely understandable for people to think that the police have better things to worry about than suspicious activity around a mailbox, or a suspicious person in a neighbourhood, or if there is a vehicle being driven around that shouldn’t be there.
But it still might be worth a call to the police, regardless of whether we’re in the midst of a recent string of thefts or not.
