FALL RIVER: The new operations officer in charge for the RCMP in the Fall River area said residents complaints have been heard, and plans are in place for more policing in the coming weeks and months.
At a community meeting held at the LWF Hall in Fall River and resident-organized, Inspector Addie Maccallum, Operations Officer West for Halifax District RCMP, said he has only been in the position for two-and-a-half months but has been brought up to speed on concerns and issues in the area.
Some of that comes from the monthly meetings he has with Councillor Cathy Deagle Gammon, who encourages residents to advise her of issues as she passes that along to him either after receiving the concern or does a follow-up on those concerns during their monthly meeting.
“During the month I will get emails from residents letting me know where there’s a problem, so I will send that to them,” said Deagle Gammon.
“For the meeting I will go through the list of emails I get for them, please do keep sending the emails and making the phone calls to the RCMP non emergency line as that is the information I need to speak to them.”
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Insp. Maccallum said he watches what his officers does quietly and listens for the complaints from the community as to where they need to be patrolling .
“One of the major things was Highway 2 through Fall River, the intersection, and Lockview High,” he said. ‘I know those areas because my daughter played volleyball and she had to play at LHS.”
He said they took all the calls for service in the past year, identified places and times they were happening, and then built a plan.
“The big three included Hwy 2 in Fall River,” he said. “People might say there’s problems over there or problems over here. There’s traffic problems, crime issues and social issues, there’s only so many of us and only so much energy that can be put into things.”
Insp. Maccallum said for the past three weeks his officers focus was on Highway 2 in Fall River.
“They were there every day, sometimes multiple times and sometimes in marked cars and sometimes in unmarked cars,” he said.
One of those days two cars that went speeding from the Sobeys mall up Fall River Road were greeted shortly by two police cruisers that had been stationed across from Shoppers. This happened at around 8:30 p.m. on a weekday night. (The Laker News was at Tim’s working when we saw the cruisers go after the two vehicles that went speeding up Fall River Road).
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He said he’s continuing to research what areas need more patrols and working on coming up for a plan to try not do just enforcement, but education too.
“Enforcement is fine, when education fails,” he said. “A lot of these people that are committing these offences (speeding, dangerous driving, etc.) are the average Joe residents who are running behind, rushing to get the kids to school, and there’s traffic congestion . Not everyone deserves a ticket.
“We do issue a tonne of warnings , and that’s the education factor of it.”
Insp. Maccallum said the RCMP are working on holding some community engagement meeting s in the next month or two and hope to hold one in the Fall River area to hear feedback from the community.
He said they were discussing with other stakeholders and HRM about a variety of safety issues, whether it was around speed limits or infrastructure not being up to snuff to handle traffic volumes.
“We continue to try and determine where we need to be,” he said. “We do need to know what those issues are. There are times where they become community known, but those never make its way to us at the police, so we know. We can’t respond to something e don’t know about.”
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Insp. Maccallum addressed concerns of speeding along Waverley Road, and in particular the resident who said they were told police couldn’t park anywhere on the road to be able to check for speeding.
“I’m not sure who told you there’s nowhere for us to park, we only need a driveway and there’s lots of people who would likely let us park in their driveways to do speed radar checks,” Insp. Maccallum said.
He said the spots they go to and do speed checks are because of the number of complaints police receive and their crashes.
“If we’re not going by intelligence-led data to where we put our resources then we’re just running place to place, then I don’t think anybody would be happy.”
Insp. McCallum did have some insight to provide residents of Waverley.
“It will be getting something like what Hwy 2 in Fall River got for the last three weeks, very soon,” said Insp. Maccallum. “Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for as there are a lot of other people that get caught as well. You’ll see us soon.
“All joking aside it is something that we take seriously and are aware of and Waverley Road will be getting attention very soon.”
