In an attempt to reduce rural crime, the Rural Municipality of Edenwold hired Community Safety Officers and wrangled increased participation in the local rural crime watch program.
The RM of Edenwold is located on the eastern boundary of Regina. One of its counsillors, Tim Brodt, said the CSOs deter theft, but also help prevent road damage from overweight vehicles.
“Our guys have jurisdiction that is 80 kilometres or under.”
He said the CSOs have radar and can issue speeding tickets or other traffic infractions, and have scales to test for overweight vehicles.
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“It’s nice because those are the guys that are hurting our roads and they are the guys we are trying to stop from doing that.”
Ron Roteliuk, a retired police officer with 33 years on the job for the Regina police force, is one of three CSOs employed by the RM.
He has ticketed farmers and others with overweight loads and said it is important because overweight loads cause costly damage to roads.
He also gives warnings and tickets to people operating ATVs on RM roads.
“We have lots of problems with ATVs…. They are not supposed to be on the RM roads because they are unregistered motor vehicles and under the ATV act, it’s against the law to be travelling on the RM roads,” he said.
When a ticket is written by a CSO, 75 percent of the revenue goes to the RM. The province retains the other 25 percent.
In terms of stopping rural theft, Roteliuk said he has helped with getting charges filed against alleged thieves.
“We knew there were some thefts of big batteries and some damage to equipment in some of the pits in the RM. So we got word to keep on lookout for strange behaviour that could be some of the suspects. It just so happened that one of the victims followed some tracks that led to an address. We called the RCMP and we worked together and there was an arrest made,” Roteliuk said.
Brodt is also president of rural crime watch in the area, which has increased its membership to about 90.
He is promoting the use of WhatsApp as a notification system for members of the rural crime watch group.
WhatsApp is a smartphone app that people use to talk, text or send photos to each other within specific groups.
“We’ve had it going for close to two years because just about everybody has a cellphone with them. It’s kind of nice that it’s instant, that you can alert people when there is crime in the area,” Brodt said.
The RM’s CSOs are also part of the WhatsApp group, which keeps them informed with what the crime watch group is seeing, and a few of the area’s RCMP also use the app.
