A visit by the OPP to Penetanguishene council provided an insight into the community safety and policing act, crime statistics, and an active effort to re-open the Penetanguishene walk-in office.
Southern Georgian Bay OPP detachment commander Inspector Todd Pittman provided a verbal presentation regarding the Community Safety and Policing Act consultation at the recent regular council meeting.
The intent was to highlight three key priorities on the existing detachment action plan and ask for comments, regarding: crime prevention; policing roadways, waterways and trails; and community well-being
“The first key priority that we have is on addressing and preventing crime in our policing area while maintaining investigative excellence,” said Pittman.
“Really, that's about building those relationships with our victim services, looking at targeting intimate partner violence.”
He noted that two positions were implemented but not yet filled to combat the epidemic of intimate partner violence.
Through various working partnerships ranging from Crown attorneys, local shelters, youth wellness hubs and more, Pittman described the various means which the OPP engaged with the community. Additionally, the community street crimes unit engaged in drug crimes as well as property crimes.
“If I'm not mistaken, there was a warrant executed (recently) in the town of Penetanguishene resulting in a recovered stolen BMW that we now have in our hands, being processed by our forensic identification team,” said Pittman.
Pittman added that the mental health response team would be rebranded as MCCRT (Mobile Crisis Rapid Response Team), with his aim to increase the number officers from one to two due to the “quite high” mental health occurrences in Penetanguishene compared to other communities.
The second priority listed by Pittman involved roadways, waterways, trails, and the year-round focus on policing those.
He reminded council that the Southern Georgian Bay OPP was “one of the fortunate detachments with a full-time marine unit”, and that he could be looking at the detachment obtaining all-terrain vehicles for increased patrol for communities with related bylaws.
“We’ll continue to do our RIDE initiatives, focus patrols on high-traffic complaint areas,” Pittman added. “We do directed foot patrols as well, just on areas where we have increased drug use and things like that.”
The third key priority was on community well being, and partnerships within the detachment stakeholder communities. “That's engaging these in being a part of the committees,” Pittman said, “the discussion, and really looking for a whole-of-community approach to community well being is a big focus for us.
“It's important, I think, to hear from our business what's happening in our streets, what they're seeing, and to get the pulse of the community.”
With the core presentation addressed, Pittman included a brief summary of crime statistics he had on hand for Penetanguishene.
Motor vehicle collisions of personal injuries, fatalities, and property damage, were down 29.5 per cent from 2022 to date; speeding charges in Penetanguishene were up 86.2 per cent; seatbelt charges were up 200 per cent; and Pittman stated that he was happy to see that impaired charges were down 31.6 per cent.
Violent crimes included one homicide in 2023, with other serious violent crime of attempted murder, sexual assault, assault, firearms offenses, and robberies down 47 per cent from 2022 to date, “which is a very good thing”.
“Our property crimes – so that's arsons, break and enters, theft over, theft under $5,000 as a threshold, possession of stolen goods – even though we just did recover a BMW yesterday, we are still down 32.5 per cent which is a good thing,” said Pittman.
“It’s not the enforcement, it's the amount of calls for service and issues for those things are going down, which is great for our overall community safety and well being.”
Drug crime saw a 20 per cent overall decrease, while clearance rates were at 63.9 per cent overall. Property crimes, “often the most difficult one to solve”, said Pittman, were below the provincial average sitting at 17 per cent.
“We brought in last year, and we're still pushing it, trying to get things like the CamSAFE initiative, trying to get people comfortable with coming and reporting these crimes to police and identifying the people responsible.”
Regarding mental health calls, 112 were reported in 2023 while 2022 saw 95; Pittman offered that the to-date number of 78 currently meant that “we're probably going to be up around that 100-plus mark again this year, just showing that mental health is on the rise in our communities and we need a response.”
Coun. Doug Leroux shared that speeding was the biggest complaint in the town from what residents had told him, and Pittman acknowledged that traffic complaints were “the number one complaint in the entire province.” His plan was to dedicate more officers to speed enforcement.
Addressing a previous comment by Coun. George Vadeboncoeur about deployed resources in the future, Pittman explained that he had since consulted regarding a staffing deployment model as the way to gain future staff. He specifically noted the Penetanguishene OPP satellite office which had closed its doors in 2022.
“We ended up closing the office when we lost one of our detachment administrative clerks, because then we had nobody to work the front desk. We still do have officers going in and utilizing the office, however,” said Pittman.
“Of interest right now, we’re actually getting more staff,” Pittman added. “We had three new staff start this week, and we’re getting another five by February, so we're actually overstaffed a little bit in the office.
“One of the overstaffs that I would like, and I’m actively working on, is another detachment administrative clerk. If I can get that clerk, then we will reopen the Penetanguishene office for walk-in service from the detachment, and that’s something I’m working on.”
Meetings of Penetanguishene council are held on the second Wednesday of each month, and can be watched live on Rogers TV cable 53 when available, or on the Rogers TV website.
Archives of council meetings are located on the Town of Penetanguishene YouTube channel.
