In terms of safety and security, Estevan is beginning to look better and better.
Word was received last week that our complement of RCMP personnel is about to be bumped up to accommodate the increased traffic and its intensity on our local highways. This is a fact that has not yet been acknowledged by the Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure, but it certainly has been by the law enforcement and protection agencies and they are responding to the increased volumes and demands.
Dealing with other security items, we note that the Estevan Police Service personnel numbers were also increased over the past year with positive results and an increase in enforcement that managed to draw out some of the less welcomed events in the community and expose them to the court system with successfully completed investigations.
Naturally, the local drug trafficking and illicit activities need to be monitored consistently. They won't go away, but they can be controlled.
It seems we are often a little hard on our own community in terms of safety concerns and perhaps we shouldn't be so judgemental.
After all, when we hear about the slaying of five people in Winnipeg over drug related activities and the epitome of Canadian retirement communities, Kelowna, being put at risk with gangland slayings during the past weekend, and resorts being blown and blasted away in Mexico, Estevan looks rather serene. That's due to a lot of diligence on behalf of our peace officers and officials.
Recent unscientific polls carried out on our website indicated that Estevanites and those who care about this city have shown us that when it came to local concerns, crime was a poor fourth with just 16.3 per cent of the vote. We were far more concerned over Estevan's poor roads (just under 37 per cent) than we were about the drug dealers. Another 25 per cent of us were worried about the housing situation. In fact the weather problems we've had ... something entirely out of our hands, rated a 23 per cent, still ahead of the crime concerns.
Yet when our pollsters asked Estevanites if they felt the city was a safe place to live, we said no, to the tune of 57.5 per cent, which leaves us with the mixed message. Do we feel safer at certain times of the year? Or have things just gotten that much better on the safety and security file over the past few months?
We can't read the minds of our polling respondents, but we can read headlines from other centres, and from what we see coming out of the places like Mexico, Kelowna, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Regina and Saskatoon, we're doing better than OK in terms of community safety issues. The tricky part is to maintain this level of confidence and it appears as if help is on the way on that front too, with the arrival of a dedicated RCMP traffic unit within the next few months.
