McLeese Lake residents and the Manager of Community Safety for the City of Williams Lake will be working together to establish Rural Crime Watch.
“Inspector (Jeff) Pelley had been invited to sort of give a state of the nation on what the crime picture looked like so he asked me to come along because I do some of his data mining for him,” says Dave Dickson of the community meeting held Wednesday.
“So we have struck an agreement. We’ll work with a lady that’s very community savvy on networking, social media, and all that kind of stuff.”
Dickson adds while they still need to have a few more conversations, they will be working together.
“The big thing is to keep the community aware of what’s going on in their community,” he says.
“I share the information to who has a network of their community folks through email, whatever so if we have something in a community it’s a matter of us sending an email or a text to a person, and that person can then immediately send a fan out to all their communities.”
“If their community is safe, it makes our community safer also. Something might happen in Williams Lake but if I pass the message to those key outlying communities then we have more eyes and ears, and that quite often generates some good information through direct calls to the detachment or Crime Stoppers and ultimately makes our city and the Regional District a better and a safer place.”
CRD Area D Director Steve Forseth said the meeting was set up after he was asked by community members following reports of break-ins at Cuisson and McLeese Lake areas this spring if Rural Crime Watch could be established.
“Years ago in the past, it certainly seemed to work, and I have interest from people that are willing to do it. It’s not a one-man job; it has to be the community that takes the lead on it,” says Dickson noting that although Rural Crime Watch used to be a huge thing many years, it’s not happening to the degree that it was.
“We have these communities that are interested so Inspector Pelley and I have had a conversation and we’re going to make it happen.”