The Estevan Police Service recently released some of their figures for policing over the month of August.

These included numbers for how many services calls they went to, how many crimes happened against both person and property, and a couple of arrests under the cannabis act.

While service numbers increased from 837 last August to 1,044 this month, Mayor Roy Ludwig, who is on the board of police commissioners, says that's not too unusual.

"I would say it's somewhat normal," said Ludwig, "Our calls as compared to Weyburn have always been, as a rule, busier. We usually have a higher number of calls as compared to our sister city but it shows that our police are doing a great job and are very busy."

The rising amount of calls can be attributed to pretty standard causes.

One thing that Ludwig says isn't a huge factor in Estevan is police having to be called out to help settle incidents surrounding access around COVID.

"You know, we haven't had a lot of that," said Ludwig, "I know initially, there was interaction with people over that, but lately, it's been fairly quiet and very good. People have been abiding by the rules, and as you can tell in some provinces and some cities you always have the people who are angry and picketing and what have you, but we haven't had many issues in Estevan."

The September 9th meeting also had a few other pieces of info:

  • Crimes against the person were down from 14 last August to four, with all of those cases being assaults.
  • Crimes against property were at 23, compared to the 43 from the previous year.
  • No charges were laid under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, though two were laid under the Cannabis Act.
  • There were 11 Criminal Traffic Code Violations.

Ludwig says it's good to see those numbers fall.

"Those are all numbers that we're happy to see going down," said Ludwig.

The Estevan Police Service will also be bust soon, with the new chief of police Rich Lowen starting in his position on September 20th.