False alarms, mischief complaints, 911 hang-ups, thefts and robberies

By Tina Comeau

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

Mischief complaints, false alarms and 911 hang-ups accounted for many of the calls for service the Yarmouth Town RCMP Detachment responded to in 2007, whereas the so-called ‘serious offences’ were on the lower end of the scale.

There were no homicides in the town over the past year, although there were nine robbery investigations, one of which involved a firearm with five others involved knives.

A breakdown of other calls for service during the past year includes the following.

There were 184 reported assaults for the year, four of which were aggravated assaults. A further breakdown shows 162 were common assaults and 18 were assaults involving a weapon.

“This doesn’t always mean a gun or knife, it could be a beer bottle, a broom stick, depending on how it is being used against the other individual,” Constable Mark Connell says about the definition of a ‘weapon.’

The number of mischief complaints over the year was high with 353 calls for service. These calls covered a lot of ground over the past year, including vandalism to property, scratched cars, damaged vehicles and other basic property damage calls.

The two other types of calls for service that accounted for much of the RCMP’s time, also amounted to a huge waste of RCMP resources says Const. Connell, with 911 hang-ups numbering 226 and false alarms going off at businesses or residences totaling 451.

“Under the 911 Act, we are mandated to respond to every 911 call,” says RCMP Constable Mark Connell. This is even if the person phones back to say there is no emergency.

A lot of the calls the police are responding to end up being cases where young people have been playing with the phone and have dialed the emergency response number.

The Yarmouth Mall, the Mariners Centre and the YMCA where public payphones are located tend to be where many of the calls are originating from, since 911 will dial through even if no money has been deposited into the telephone.

There were 115 break and enters during 2007 – 42 into businesses, 56 into residences and 17 falling in the ‘other’ category.

The detachment recorded 226 vehicle collisions, 19 of which involved injuries. Of the overall total, 139 were accidents reported to the detachment for insurance purposes.

There were also 124 thefts over the past year, 45 of these thefts being from autos.



QUICK GLANCE

Calls for service the Yarmouth Town RCMP Detachment responded to in 2007:

•451 false alarms

•353 mischief/property damage/vandalism

•226 hang-ups of 911 calls

•184 assaults

•158 collisions

•124 thefts

•115 break and enters

•nine robberies