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5 Ways You Can Get Involved in Crime Prevention

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This article is provided by the Central Alberta Crime Prevention Centre.

If you are already familiar with the Centre, scroll down to the bottom for the 5 WAYS,
but we thought you might want to know a bit about the Centre first 

Did you know that Red Deer has a Crime Prevention Centre?

Since 2012, the Central Alberta Crime Prevention Centre (CACPC) has been engaging, educating, and empowering residents and businesses to promote and sustain community safety. CACPC is unique in North America because we are the only Crime Prevention Centre who partners with five (5) other crime prevention organizations including the Alberta Provincial Rural Crime Watch Association, Citizens on Patrol, Crime Stoppers, MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) and Neighbourhood Watch.

How does the Central Alberta Crime Prevention Centre help in preventing crime?

Our primary role is to provide education to residents and businesses about how they can protect themselves against crime. We attend and initiate many connecting events where we hand out free Crime Prevention Packages that contain valuable information and resources from us and our partners. We provide CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) reviews for residents and business experiencing crime issues and give them practical ideas on how to “target harden” their properties. We also provide basic and advanced CPTED training, twice per year, with instructors who have their Professional CPTED Designations for those in law enforcement or security, urban or rural planners, councilors, building or fire inspectors, property managers, business owners, and those interested in crime prevention would benefit from this training.

CPTED is based on the premise that “the proper design and effective use of the
built environment can lead
to a reduction in the incidence and fear of crime, and an improvement in the quality of life”.

Does CACPC work with the RCMP?

Definitely! We work in conjunction primarily with the Community Policing division of the RCMP. We support them and they support us. The Centre works with the RCMP to educate residents or businesses about crime prevention. Sometimes we are dropping off crime prevention packages. Sometimes we are connecting with the Community Association for that neighbourhood to put on a crime prevention presentation or doing a “pop-up” information booth or BBQ in a neighbourhood. Sometimes we are cleaning graffiti. And sometimes we go out with RCMP members to perform a CPTED review on properties to give crime prevention suggestions to the property owners.

How is the CACPC funded?

The CACPC is a registered non-profit charity. We receive a portion of our funding form the City of Red Deer as part of their commitment to community safety. However, we need to raise a significant portion of our budget in order to keep operating. We do this primarily through fundraising events such as our Pub Night and  Charity Checkstop (“Coats for Kids & Cash for Crime Prevention”) in October and our Touch-A-Truck event in May, our new FundScrip gift card program, and other fundraising events including raffles and BBQ’s.

 

5 WAYS To Get Involved in Crime Prevention

  1. Educate Yourself! Please feel free to drop by the Centre and pick up a FREE crime prevention package for yourself and your friends and/or neighbours. You can also check out resources and information on the CACPC website and the Crime Prevention ideas on the City of Red Deer’s website. The more you understand about how to make your property less attractive to the criminal, the better!
  2. Get to Know your neighbours! Did you know that the #1 crime prevention tool is knowing your neighbours? It’s not always easy to meet our neighbours, so here are 3 ways to get to know your neighbours: 1) Become a Block Captain with Neighbourhood Watch. It’s easy! You will be responsible for getting to know 8 of your neighbours (one on each side of your home, 3 behind you and 3 in front of you) and watch out for each other, reporting suspicious activity to the RCMP (via the non-emergency line 403-343-5575), and keeping those 8 neighbours aware of any issues of crime in your neighbourhood. 2) Join your Community Association. If your neighbourhood doesn’t have one, you might consider getting some of your neighbours together and starting one. 3) Join an online community for your neighbourhood, like Next Door. Nextdoor is the world’s largest social network for the neighborhood and completely FREE to join. Nextdoor enables truly local conversations that empower neighbors to build stronger and safer communities. Neighbour are using Nextdoor to recommend a house painter, spread the word about a lost dog, organize a Neighbourhood Watch group or quickly get the word out about a break-in, share information during a natural disaster, find a new home for an outgrown bike and much more! There are also a number of Red Deer community association and crime watch pages on Facebook you can participate in social media.
  3. Support Crime Prevention with your Time! The Central Alberta Crime Prevention Centre has a number of event-based (short shift) opportunities to volunteer with us. For more information about our volunteer opportunities, you can visit our website, or check out VolunteerConnector.org.  You also might be interested in joining Citizens on Patrol (COP). The main goal of the Citizens on Patrol Program is to be on the look-out for any suspicious or criminal activity, to record this activity and, where appropriate, to report such activities to the police. COP members act as additional “eyes and ears” for their community and the police, which assists in reducing crime. All Red Deer COP members receive training from and work with the RCMP.
  4. Support Crime Prevention with your Money! Many people are unable to volunteer but can provide support through donations, buying gift cards through us, sponsorships, or by attending our fundraising events. To donate to the Central Alberta Crime Prevention Centre, click HERE. You will receive a tax receipt for your donation.
  5. Be a Positive Force in Our Community! When people are empowered, they feel less like victims. So, if you are educated and actively participating in crime prevention by completing target hardening measures for your property, are getting to know your neighbours, and donating your time or money, you are contributing to the solution and therefore will feel empowered! And people that are empowered, are more positive. And, when our friends complain about the crime problem in Red Deer, we can suggest how they can too get involved in crime prevention.

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Community

SPARC Red Deer – Caring Adult Nominations open now!

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Red Deer community let’s give a round of applause to the incredible adults shaping the future of our kids. Whether they’re a coach, neighbour, teacher, mentor, instructor, or someone special, we want to know about them!

Tell us the inspiring story of how your nominee is helping kids grow up great. We will honour the first 100 local nominees for their outstanding contributions to youth development. It’s time to highlight those who consistently go above and beyond!

To nominate, visit Events (sparcreddeer.ca)

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Addictions

‘Harm Reduction’ is killing B.C.’s addicts. There’s got to be a better way

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Susan Martinuk 

B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy

Since 2016, more than 40,000 Canadians have died from opioid drug overdoses — almost as many as died during the Second World War.
Governments, health care professionals and addiction experts all acknowledge that widespread use of opioids has created a public health crisis in Canada. Yet they agree on virtually nothing else about this crisis, including its causes, possible remedies and whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents.

Fuelled by the deadly manufactured opioid fentanyl, Canada’s national drug overdose rate stood at 19.3 people per 100,000 in 2022, a shockingly high number when compared to the European Union’s rate of just 1.8. But national statistics hide considerable geographic variation. British Columbia and Alberta together account for only a quarter of Canada’s population yet nearly half of all opioid deaths. B.C.’s 2022 death rate of 45.2/100,000 is more than double the national average, with Alberta close behind at 33.3/100,00.

In response to the drug crisis, Canada’s two western-most provinces have taken markedly divergent approaches, and in doing so have created a natural experiment with national implications.

B.C. has emphasized harm reduction, which seeks to eliminate the damaging effects of illicit drugs without actually removing them from the equation. The strategy focuses on creating access to clean drugs and includes such measures as “safe” injection sites, needle exchange programs, crack-pipe giveaways and even drug-dispensing vending machines. The approach goes so far as to distribute drugs like heroin and cocaine free of charge in the hope addicts will no longer be tempted by potentially tainted street drugs and may eventually seek help.

But safe-supply policies create many unexpected consequences. A National Post investigation found, for example, that government-supplied hydromorphone pills handed out to addicts in Vancouver are often re-sold on the street to other addicts. The sellers then use the money to purchase a street drug that provides a better high — namely, fentanyl.

Doubling down on safe supply, B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy — though for now that effort has been stymied by the courts.

According to Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, “The stats tell us that harm reduction isn’t working.” In an interview, he calls decriminalization “a disaster” and proposes a policy shift that recognizes the connection between mental illness and addiction. The province, he says, needs “massive numbers of beds in treatment facilities that deal with both addictions and long-term mental health problems (plus) access to free counselling and housing.”

In fact, Montague’s wish is coming true — one province east, in Alberta. Since the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019, Alberta has been transforming its drug addiction policy away from harm reduction and towards publicly-funded treatment and recovery efforts.

Instead of offering safe-injection sites and free drugs, Alberta is building a network of 10 therapeutic communities across the province where patients can stay for up to a year, receiving therapy and medical treatment and developing skills that will enable them to build a life outside the drug culture. All for free. The province’s first two new recovery centres opened last year in Lethbridge and Red Deer. There are currently over 29,000 addiction treatment spaces in the province.

This treatment-based strategy is in large part the work of Marshall Smith, current chief of staff to Alberta’s premier and a former addict himself, whose life story is a testament to the importance of treatment and recovery.

The sharply contrasting policies of B.C. and Alberta allow a comparison of what works and what doesn’t. A first, tentative report card on this natural experiment was produced last year in a study from Stanford University’s network on addiction policy (SNAP). Noting “a lack of policy innovation in B.C.,” where harm reduction has become the dominant policy approach, the report argues that in fact “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” But it concludes that “Canada overall, and B.C. in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”

The report is admittedly an early analysis of these two contrasting approaches. Most of Alberta’s recovery homes are still under construction, and B.C.’s decriminalization policy is only a year old. And since the report was published, opioid death rates have inched higher in both provinces.

Still, the early returns do seem to favour Alberta’s approach. That should be regarded as good news. Society certainly has an obligation to try to help drug users. But that duty must involve more than offering addicts free drugs. Addicted people need treatment so they can kick their potentially deadly habit and go on to live healthy, meaningful lives. Dignity comes from a life of purpose and self-control, not a government-funded fix.

Susan Martinuk is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of the 2021 book Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health Care Crisis. A longer version of this article recently appeared at C2CJournal.ca.

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