Property crimes a focus for 2025

Posted on March 27, 2025 by Vauxhall Advance

By Nikki Jamieson
Vauxhall Advance
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Property crimes was a focus of discussion for a recent RCMP delegation to Vauxhall council.

During their regular March 17 meeting, Vauxhall town council reviewed the Taber RCMP stats for the first two months of 2025.

The Taber detachment received eight calls for service in the Vauxhall area, and report three criminal code violations and two non-criminal code for the area.

The detachment also saw a 61 per cent increase in criminal code violations between January to February 2025 compared to the same period last year. This included a 92 per cent increase in property offences, one call for persons crime and two other criminal code. However, sgt. Stewart Gemmill cautioned council that some numbers have gone up immensely due to the low numbers.

“There is such a small sample size, it’s going to throw things out of whack if we’re going to have one or two more,” said Gemmill. 

The area had seen two more instances of break and enters – one of which had charges laid – but one less MV theft and one less theft under $5,000, compared to the same time last year. Six charges were laid in criminal code investigations, and they received one complaint of domestic violence.

When asked what their enforcement priorities were for the coming year. At a previous meeting, Gemmill and council had discussed swapping out the focus on family violence to property crimes, in addition to continuing the focus on traffic safety and increasing visibility and participating in community events. Coun. Shelley Deleeuw noted that the focus on those priorities would also allow the RCMP to “share a little more on that too”.

Coun. Russell Norris asked if there was any underlying factors, like drugs, driving the increase in property crimes. Gemmill said it did play a large part in driving property crimes. He also noted a recent case law that said scrap metal dealers don’t need to take ID, that contributed in a rise in metal thefts.

“About 10 years ago I think, just going by memory, it was that they had to, and then just very recently a judge decided that that’s not right, they shouldn’t have to do that. And so they’ve stopped doing it, and we’ve seen a rise in (theft),” said Gemmill. “That’s going to affect catalytic converters and all that kind of stuff.”

In November 2023, a Alberta Court of Justice judge ruled that the Alberta Scrap Metal Dealers and Recyclers Identification Act – which required the scrap metal purchasers to collect information for sellers such as first name and surname, current  address, government-approved identification, their business name, and details of the vehicle on which the scrap metal was transported – saying it was unconstitutional as it dealt solely with criminal law, which was the federal government’s domain. The Alberta Court of Justice held that provisions of the Act violated the Charter prohibition against unreasonable search in January of this year.

Council received the report for information.