NEW BID FOR NEW COP

Third Try For Seventeenth Local RCMP Officer

Fort Saskatchewan Record -- City council will hear a new bid to put
another RCMP officer on the streets later this month.

Coun. Tom Hutchison made another request for a seventeenth local
police officer at Tuesday's meeting. Council voted down two requests
to spend $85,000 a year for a new RCMP officer during last fall's
budget debate. But recent changes to the provincial funding formula
mean the Fort will get an extra $106,000 a year for law
enforcement.

Council will make a decision on the new officer during their Apr. 27
meeting where they set the 2004 mill rate and make final adjustments
to the 2004 budget.

Last fall Policing Committee chair Terry Noble warned that prevention
programs, specifically the Drug Abuse Resistance Education or DARE
program, would suffer if a new officer wasn't approved. The local RCMP
detachment is forming a plain clothes unit to combat drug trafficking,
but that will leave a shortage of officers to work on prevention
programs, Nobel warned.

Councillors Ed Marler, Tami Petroski and Tom Hutchison supported
adding another officer, but the majority of Councillors remained
unconvinced. Mayor Ken Hodgins and Councillors Don Westman, Jim
Sheasgreen and Valerie Holowach felt the current level of policing was
adequate. Fort Saskatchewan currently has one officer for every 850
residents, which is about average for Alberta municipalities.

Local RCMP statistics show the amount of criminal code charges laid in
2003 were up 30 per cent from the previous year. Total of 1,496
charges were laid in 2003 compared to 1,149 in 2002. The majority of
the increase comes from theft charges. There was an eight per cent
jump in the number of people in 2003;186 compared to 172 the previous
year.

Last month's Provincial Budget increased the per capita grant to local
governments from $8 to $16 a year. For the Fort that means an
additional $106,000 although the additional money does not have to be
used for law enforcement. The City currently pays 70 per cent,
$891,000, of the total costs, which are budgeted at nearly $1.2
million for 2004.