UCP release recommendations to deal with rural crime

The United Conservative Party is out with recommendations to try to curb rural crime.

The UCP says a ‘crime epidemic’ is ‘plaguing’ rural Alberta for more than three years with some of their recommendations looking at boosting police response, targeting repeat offenders and improving victim services.

Solicitor General Critic Mike Ellis says the recent case of Eduoard Maurice who was cleared after shooting a man on his property near Okotoks raised awareness.

“These people potentially could be attacking me, could be attacking parts of my property, they’re going to use force from their property, and they can.” Ellis explains, “They can use reasonable force to remove that person from the property. The question is: What is reasonable force.?”

Their plan includes education on that subject and also making the aggravating factors in such incidents more widely known.

Ellis also says there is a crisis in rural Alberta, partly due to the opioid epidemic, with their plan also looking into managing addiction and mental health.

“There are groups of people that may fall into that repeat offender category, that will be for the court to decide.” Ellis states, “But there are people who are bad and they prey upon the most vulnerable and right now, in rural Alberta, there are vulnerable people out there and the bad people know that.”

One key point of the plan is to make sure repeat offenders can’t get away with committing crimes in different jurisdictions by requiring prosecutors to get complete criminal records at bail hearings, including any other unproven charges.