The new Estevan Board of Police Commissioners met for the first time following the municipal election yesterday, going over the numbers for October and November during the meeting.
In attendance were members of the police board which included the mayor, councillors, the Estevan Police Service's chief and deputy chief.
Chief Jamie Blunden described some of the more notable stats from the report, beginning with the near-doubling of thefts of motor vehicles year to date in 2024 compared to 2023.
"The motor vehicles are up significantly from 23 to 24. Feel like a lot of those, 50 per cent of them are taken without a homeowner's consent. A lot of them aren't really theft, someone went for a joy ride and didn't get the owner's permission. We're going to see that's been sort of the flavor over the last three or four months and was sort of a lot higher in the summer months."
Theft under $5,000 was also up over the year, with Blunden identifying that as a point they'll watch to see if the trend continues.
One big stat that came in during October was an attempted murder, though Blunden explains why they don't have it on the list.
"In October we had one attempted murder, it was unfounded, it was in as an attempted murder overall at the end of the day."
Another concerning stat is seeing three robberies year to date in 2024, though Blunden says that in context the situations are on the lower end of intensity.
"In 2024 year to date, there's three robbery charges now. Those were robbers only for the simple fact that there's a person present when the theft of a cell phone occurred. You know, it really wasn't the robbery, where a guy goes in and robs a store, it was somebody took a cell phone with somebody present and it's on the lower end of robberies there."
The committee then had a discussion on changing stats, as break-and-enter business crimes were at 7 year-to-date in the October report and 6 in the November report.
Rather than being an error, Blunden explained that when some stats go down, it's because sometimes when a charge does not get laid, the statistics will then correct themselves by removing that incident.
An example of that was pointed out in the November report, with a charge of arson coming up that was the first of the year.
Blunden stated that as the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency looked at the incident, they ruled it as not an arson, and as such in the December report the Arson section will instead show a zero.