ESTEVAN — The Estevan Police Service continued to see a decrease in the number of calls for service as well as different types of crimes this year.
Numbers released at the March 13 meeting of the Estevan board of police commissioners showed that the EPS dealt with 412 calls for service this February, as compared to 554 in February 2024. Year-to-date total number of calls went down 22 per cent from 1,091 in 2024 to 855 in the first two months of this year.
"We're in a good position all the way around with respect to all different categories and offence types," said Estevan Police Chief Jamie Blunden.
Crimes against person, crimes against property, Controlled Drug and Substance Act violations, and Criminal Code traffic violations all also saw a decline in February and on a year-to-date basis.
The EPS dealt with five crimes against the person, with four assaults and one sexual crime in February. They responded to nine such crimes in February 2024. In the first two months of this year, police dealt with 16 crimes against person, with nine assaults, four sexual crimes and three assaults causing bodily harm. The number of these kinds of crimes declined by 41 per cent from 27 such calls laid over the same period of time a year earlier.
There were 28 crimes against property in February and a total of 46 such occurrences in the first two months of the year. In January and February 2024, the EPS responded to a total of 67 such occurrences, so this year has seen a 31 per cent decline.
Out of the 28 crimes against property in February, 12 were thefts under $5,000, eight were mischief-willful damage complaints, three were residential break and enter cases, two were motor vehicle thefts, two were thefts over $5,000 and one arson.
On a year-to-date basis, the EPS responded to 24 thefts under $5,000, 12 mischief/wilful damage complaints, four vehicle thefts, three break and enters, two thefts over $5,000 and one arson.
However, Blunden said as investigations progress, some of the numbers may change.
"Theft over $5,000, you'll see in February this year we had two thefts over $5,000, so a little bit of context to that. We did have a stolen vehicle that was taken from here and was recovered. We processed it through our identification unit, and it had over $5,000 worth of stolen property,” Blunden explained. “That investigation was ongoing. We ended up catching an individual, there was a pawn print, so our ident officer was looking to try and link up the prints as well as some DNA from there.
“And the other theft over $5,000 was originally recorded as a theft over, but the indication is probably by next month that would be converted over to theft under, based on the circumstances.”
The EPS laid four charges under CDSA in February, all for trafficking. They had four CDSA charges in February 2024 as well. In the first two months of the year, they laid five charges, all for trafficking, as opposed to six a year earlier, which is a 17 per cent decline.
The Criminal Code traffic violations have seen a decrease as well. Eight charges were laid so far this year, including five for impaired/exceed-related offences, and three for impairment by drug, which is a 67 per cent decline from 24 charges they laid in January-February a year earlier.
The EPS dealt with three Criminal Code traffic violations in February, including two incidents for impaired/exceed-related offences and one for drug impairment. Twelve violations were detected in February 2024.
“When you look at the criminal code traffic violations, we're down significantly,” Blunden pointed out. “We had one of our members retire from CTSS, our Combined Traffic Services Saskatchewan. We've also had a number of vacancies that we've been carrying, so the priority was to handle front lines and response sort of calls, and there wasn't as much priority put on to traffic, … and that's one of the reasons why it's down.”
As for the five-year averages, the EPS averaged 1,046 calls in the first two months, with 22.4 crimes against the person, 40.6 crimes against property, 15.8 Criminal Code traffic violations and 8.2 CDSA charges.
Blunden noted that overall, crime trends are decreasing, except for crimes against property, which are 13.3 per cent higher than the five-year average. However, the trend is improving, as the year-to-date number is lower than in 2024.
Thefts under $5,000 saw a 48 per cent increase compared to the five-year average (from 16.2 to 24 cases), though it's slightly decreasing from 2024.
"We're looking good. We're probably not going to flip this. We don't want things to fall off the rails, but we are looking forward to seeing the Crime Severity Index released probably in June or July, and we're hoping for good measures there and it needs to be balanced," Blunden said.
