Every year the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) police report gives a comprehensive view of police activity in the region. There have been some increases in crime in certain areas and there has been a decrease in others.

THE EQUITY spoke to Julien Gagnon, fire and public safety coordinator at the MRC, who explained that although in certain areas the numbers look high it is important to keep in mind that the lockdown skewed those numbers as there wasn’t that much activity in the past two years.

“We did notice that there’s obviously more activity following a year where in the previous report, the average number of activities or fines that were given out were quite low, just based on the fact that covid had a big impact on that. So what we saw in this report was sort of an uptick from 2020 that increased back to either normal or average rates, with some of them going over the average rates,” said Gagnon.

This report is quite extensive with everything from data on issuing fines to prevention activities to school visits and the number of these activities that they did. Every year the Public Security Committee (CSP) of the MRC goes over it with the SQ officer in charge of the police station in Campbell’s Bay, and then it gets adopted by the Council of Mayors.

Some of the highlights in the report include the increased number of car accidents, drinking and driving charges and the number of calls overall that ended up at the police station.

In regards to the current year’s total of 298 collisions, it is rather below the lower average range. The current year’s collision record shows a significant decline from previous years except for the year 2020-21 where the number was well below the average, with 249. “The most significant change is in fatal collisions, which are down by three collisions from the previous year. This improvement is in line with the trend observed for the previous two years of this type of collision,” according to the report.

The uptake in drinking and driving charges can be explained by the fact that more people got out this year compared to the last two years but compared to the last five years, the number was about average, explained Gagnon. The report shows that between 2017-18 there were 33 cases, in 2018-19 it was 32 cases and from 2019-21 it was 34 and in the past year it rose to 38 cases of driving under the influence.

“It’s definitely the increase that was most recognizable in the annual report,” he said.

The report shows that in the past five years the number of calls coming into the station increased from 1,724 in 2017-18 then 2,639 in the past two years and a jump to 2,984 this past year.

One theory is that in the most recent years people have felt less afraid to contact the police. Gagnon relates it to the uptake in sexual assult casses that were reported a few years ago with the MeToo movement.

“So in that same line of thinking, the SQ believes that people are just less afraid to contact the police.”

In addition, every year the CSP decides on two priorities that the SQ is given the mandate to try to do activities around combating those issues.

In the past year they concentrated on speeding with all types of vehicles and reducing property crimes like theft and vandalism. Once each priority is decided the individual municipalities pinpointed the areas that experienced a lot of each of the crimes. In return police officers would then monitor those neighborhoods.

As a public safety coordinator, Gagnon’s job is about trying to aid the municipalities in any type of security or safety issue. “If the municipalities have an issue with the police, with the service they’re getting from the police, my role would be to accept that complaint or any kind of communication that needs to be done as far as the contract goes with the Sûreté du Québec.”

When looking at overall crime activity and comparing the different municipalities it is hard to do so because each area has a different population size which impacts those numbers, “For example, there’s a lot more crime in Mansfield-et-Pontefract, as opposed to a municipality like Portage-du-Fort, or Bryson. The smaller the population and the smaller the geographical area is, the less crime there is generally,” he said.

“If you only compare this last year with the prior year, it seems like everything is up. But when you go back two or three years before, we’re actually down compared to those years. It’s all in the interpretation,” he said.

The report will be online on the Sûreté du Québec website in early December.

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