The Town of Hinton has decided not to join a regional policing committee in favour of keeping its municipal advisory committee.
On Tuesday (Feb. 11), council’s committee of the whole moved to seek consensus to get an exemption from the provincial government.
“From what I’ve heard so far, it’s to our advantage to maintain our municipal policing committee,” said Mayor Nicholas Nissen. “We are doing a good job, we have good rapport between the town, our community and our police service, and I would like to see that maintained in our community.”
With recent amendments to the Police Act, municipalities served by the RCMP that have a population of 5,001 to less than 15,000 must be represented by a regional policing committee.
According to the Province, having this civilian governance body will allow communities to have more say in how they are policed by the RCMP.
Each regional committee falls within one of four RCMP districts in Alberta. Hinton is within the RCMP west district along with Drayton Valley, Edson, Peace River and Whitecourt.
Nissen explained that he had been told during provincial briefings that communities the size of Hinton that already had policing committees were “shoo-ins” for an exemption.
There would still be new requirements, such as having provincial members on the committee and enhanced security background checks.
“But from a cost perspective, I also generally believe that having to pay community members per diem in travel to go to a regional meeting that could be extraordinarily far away isn’t much cheaper than just paying the additional costs for our own members in town who don’t have to travel,” Nissen said.
Coun. Trevor Haas said Hinton was managing its crime well compared to other communities, partly due to having a municipal policing committee and a good rapport with the local RCMP detachment, and didn’t want to risk getting “lost in the weeds” of other communities’ crime issues.
“I do feel like we would get diluted with other communities involved,” he said.
Haas noted that RCMP staff sergeants already consult one another, and there was also a regional staff sergeant.
“I’m really somewhat confused why the province is even suggesting this,” he said.
