Sarnia police are eager to take feedback gathered from the community and put it into a strategy to build trust and reduce theft crimes.
Police Chief Derek Davis held a meeting on Tuesday ahead of Thursday's Sarnia Police Service (SPS) Board meeting, where a draft 2023-25 Business Plan will be presented. The business plan was developed with feedback from residents through various open house events and an online survey.
Some takeaways from this process were that the majority of respondents felt less safe in their community, and the number one reason why people chose not to report crimes such as break and enters or thefts in the last three years was that they felt nothing would happen.
During Tuesday's meeting, Davis repeatedly mentioned the personal impact on victims when a minor crime, such as a bike thefts, are committed.
Stolen bikes recovered by Sarnia police. November 15, 2022. (Photo by Natalia Vega)
The SPS recently conducted a bicycle theft project where officers deployed and monitored unattended bikes for a total of 40 hours and stepped in once an offender stole the bike. During the surveillance project, 11 people were arrested and 24 criminal charges were laid.
Various offender profiles involved those who had long lists of property-related charges previously laid by SPS.
However, one profile detailed an offender who had no criminal record and admitted to stealing the bike in order to sell it to feed their drug addiction.
"From a policing perspective, if we can prevent a person from going down a negative road, that's a win for us. That means resources can go to other things and other places," said Davis. "This is an example of where moving forward, in policing, we need to start looking at new opportunities and new ideas to start being able to take a different look, a more strategic look about the way we manage the offenders and the way we look at some of the crime pieces."
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(Video presented during Tuesday's meeting as part of a bicycle theft project.)
Councillor Adam Kilner was one of four council members who attended the meeting. He took note of what the community response was like during the past several months and how in a more diverse city, people have had different experiences when it comes to policing.
"I'm just curious to see how things emerge. I've got my own thoughts I guess on some of those things but openness and transparency are always vitally important -- especially in an increasingly diverse community such as Sarnia," said Kilner. "I am looking forward to a different paradigm because I think it's clear to me anyway, that we need to be finding feedback from people who perhaps are more hesitant to issue it."
Davis said building community trust starts with a conversation, and improving the way things are done will require more than simply hiring a few officers.
"From chief down, we're open to the conversation and we recognize that we may have to change the way we do business in some cases," said Davis.
"We have to start somewhere with working together. What we're proposing here is that in 2023, what's the next step we can take? How do we move forward in the direction that we want to go? That's what's before the board now, primarily through the business plan."
Four key areas included in the plan are operations and neighbourhood policing; community engagement and outreach; facilities, equipment, and technology; and organizational capacity.
Proposals include a mobile community outreach team with partners in order to deal with individuals in a "holistic way", expanding the Mental Health Engagement and Response Team, and increasing the police presence in the community.
Police Chief Derek Davis goes over four factors included in 2023-25 draft business plan. November 15, 2022. (Photo by Natalia Vega)
Davis said a cost-saving way to make the SPS more visible would be to introduce an auxiliary unit, something most police services already have in place. An auxiliary unit involves citizen volunteers who are trained and will work alongside police officers.
Councillor Anne Marie Gillis was encouraged by the efforts of Sarnia's new police chief in looking "out of the box" when it comes to community policing.
"That's not to say that the former police chiefs didn't do that or former police agencies didn't do that, it's just that there's a different dynamic and a different world that we're living in," said Gillis. "Having Chief Davis here from a different municipality, very close to the GTA, he has a very different understanding of how to do things differently."
The final version of the 2023-25 SPS Business Plan is expected to go back to the board in February 2023.