Moncton town hall meeting raises safety concerns over crime

Bringing forward no shortage of safety concerns in Moncton’s north end, more than 100 people gathered Wednesday night for a town hall meeting on what they’re experiencing and what they’d like to see done.

“People have been concerned about catching people on their cameras, going through their cars, breaking into their sheds, so I think they just want some advice, maybe what we can do to help curb this,” said city councillor Bryan Butler, who helped run the meeting alongside city councillor Dave Steeves.

Several members of Moncton’s city council were in attendance along with Codiac RCMP Superintendent Benoit Jolette.

Jolette spoke in front of the group, bringing forward new statistics, telling them what people can do to curb some crime in their backyards like installing lights and locks, and also encouraging people to report everything to police even if it seems like a minor issue.

“If we can link something that’s happening on a specific street, on a specific neighbourhood, with two or three calls from residents, imagine what we can do with 20 calls from residents,” he said. “Even if you’re not a victim of crime, but you see something that’s bizarre, we want that information; give us a call.”

He says that from 2022 to 2023, RCMP saw a 1.7 per cent increase in crime with break and enters and possession of stolen property seeing the largest jump. He says there was a decrease in violent persons crimes and stolen vehicles in Ward 3 specifically.

He also listened to residents concerns and answered questions as they came up throughout the meeting.

“What we’re going to do is take everything that I heard tonight and get to work right away,” he said. “We were talking about specific offenses, specific neighbourhoods, right away I’m going to go back and talk to my analysts and say, ‘What is really going on in these neighbourhoods?’

“I heard street names that I had never heard of because we have never been to some of these areas on a regular bases because they’re great neighbourhoods, but these are still areas that we need to patrol and we need to add to our regular patrols just for that visibility and that deterrents.”

For the first time ever, Codiac RCMP is conducting its own study to see how it compares to other police forces and to help determine how many more officers are needed to cover the tri-community.

“Normally it would be done by municipalities or the Codiac Regional Policing Authority; however, we decided we want to see it for ourselves,” said Jolette. “It’s been at least a year-and-a-half where we hear residents speak, ‘We need more, we need more,’ so we want to see if we need more, how much and what we’re going to be able to do with that.”

More than a dozen community members took the microphone on Wednesday night share their personal experiences.

A mom stood up and said her children are afraid to play outside because they see people walking through their yards both during the day and at night. She asked what’s being done to help the children “feel safe to be able to be kids.”

Another community member brought up speeding on Worthington Avenue and asked about how to get stop signs, speed bumps or other deterrents to slow drivers down.

While every resident had their own unique story, everything revolved around public safety.

“Ten years ago the north end was used to be called prestigious, I know you guys say the whole city’s the same, sure it is, I get it, but things are falling apart and really fast,” said one man. “Sorry to say it, but it’s falling apart faster then you can catch it.”

Butler said according to the Codiac Regional Police Authority crime map, there was a lot of crime reported in the north end in September, October and November, but it did seem to slow down at the end of December and into January.

“I just did the stats there from 2021 and in Ward 3 alone there’s 28,000 people up here, so it’s a big ward,” he said. “We just want to make sure that we’re getting the coverage that we need.”

While no concrete solutions were discussed, getting more boots on the ground was brought up the most during the two hour meeting as a way to help address the crime.

City councillor Charles Leger explained right now there are 156 RCMP officers who cover Moncton, Riverview and Dieppe.

“One thing that people don’t realize is we have about 189 officers who are hired for Codiac and the reason for that is to ensure that there are actually officers available for work,” he said. “For a number of years, over 30 per cent of the time, there were not the number of officers that we needed, so that was one of the things that really changed.”

Councillors also pointed to a work-load study that’s being done to help determine how many more officers would be needed – similar to the study that the Codiac RCMP is conducting on their own.

Councillor Dave Steeves says it’s his understanding that growing the police force is the appetite of council.

“Whether it’s feasible or not always comes down to the dollars or cents and so that is more conversations to be had,” he said.

Paul Casey has lived in the north end of 30 years. He’s been a victim of breaking and entering and theft on his property and he says they’re seeing signs of organized crime.

“It doesn’t seem to be any consequences for crime anymore, so that’s the problem with our criminal code. There’s no consequences, people can do whatever they want and that’s not right. We have to do something about this,” he said.

However, he says he left Wednesday night’s meeting feeling encouraged.

“I was a little tired, I wasn’t going to come tonight, but I thought, ‘Well I better come because I can complain all I want, but I’ve got to be part of the solution.’ So this is the first step, we’ll have more of these meetings and we’ll interact and we’ll have some solutions,” he said.

Annette Doiron has lived in the north end of 23 years now and while she hasn’t personally been affected, she hears about what other people are dealing with.

“I want to know what’s going on and I wanted to hear and I’m really impressed by the turnout and I’m really happy with the questions that were asked and the way they were answered,” she said. “I don’t think we have all the answers, but like Mr. Butler said, this is a good beginning.”

She believes more RCMP officers and a stronger presence would help deter people and help address the issue.

“Hopefully [this town hall] gets Ward 3 in the forefront of the RCMP’s mind to make sure that there is more presence, more RCMP presence, because people are speaking up and of course they say that they’re data driven so just having this many people come, certainly speaks up,” said Steeves. “It really screams that Ward 3 is serious about public safety.”

There are already talks of another town hall meeting on the same topic being organized.

The community and council both stated they would like to see higher levels of government involved, including local MLA’s.

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