Town Hall meetings allow the Innisfail RCMP to get their message out to the public about what they have been up to, what their priorities have been, successes that they’ve seen, and some statistics.
According to Staff Sergeant Ian Ihme, they will also be seeking feedback from citizens about topics including policing and public safety.
He notes that generally they hold three of them per year – one in Penhold, and two in Innisfail. Ihme says “generally this one early in the year, we use it in collaboration with the Town of Innisfail and their public safety survey that comes out to try to establish what our priorities are going to be for the next fiscal year, and then to establish what our initiatives are going to be to try and meet those priorities for the year.”
Sergeant Ihme points out that the priorities last year were crime reduction – specifically focusing on drug and property crime – along with traffic safety, and the public consultation between police and citizens. He says “for the last couple years there hasn’t been a huge variation. There’s been a slight changes with some of the initiatives we have focused on but for the most part we’ve found for the last few years that the things we’ve gotten from the citizens is that number one they want to see more of the police. So whether that just be us attending events like the Town Hall or just being involved in community events. Crime reduction, specifically property crime, is a big concern for a lot of people. Traffic safety always comes up as one of the top concerns as well.”
When it comes to public events, Ihme says “we average about around 100 events that we attend throughout the year. Some big, some small. Charity hockey game, the charity checkstop, and then the Town Halls kind of the big events that we usually do for the year for sure.”
The Innisfail RCMP’s Town Hall meeting is set for 6pm on February 19th at the Innisfail Library. One of the topics covered at it will be an update on the new Regional Victim Services model. Ihme says “the province saw a need to standardize Victim Services delivery throughout the province and that’s what they’ve done. Instead of each small municipality having their own stand alone not-for-profit Victim Services, the government has rolled out a district based regional model to make sure that, well, one that every community has access to Victim Services and that every community is receiving the same standard of care.”
Innisfail’s Fire Chief and the Town’s Manager of Protective Services, Gary Leith, will be presenting on behalf of Innisfail Protective Services and the Fire Department. Ihme says “we also hope to have Innisfail Citizens on Patrol to do a presentation and if they don’t then I’ll provide an update on that initiative.”
Listen to 96.5 The Ranch’s Community Hotline conversation with Staff Sergeant Ian Ihme.
