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Kneehill boosts protective Services

wittstock

Kneehill County is bolstering its Protective Services Department to help curb a recent rash of rural crime.
Rural crime has been in the headlines over the last year with many reports of stolen vehicles and prowling around farms and oilfield sites. Kneehill County Reeve Jerry Wittstock, is concerned.
“It’s disheartening. I have always lived in rural areas and I always felt very safe. I have never been targeted for crime,” said Wittstock. “There has been the odd thing that has come up, but that being said, we were never concerned with someone coming in to do harm to you or your family or equipment. I guess it is becoming more prevalent. It is the economy driving it I guess.”
Kneehill County is adding a Level 2 Community Peace Officer to boost safety. This was identified as a priority in its strategic planning session.
“It is for visibility ultimately. We want someone to get out there,” said Reeve Wittstock.
He says currently they have two peace officers on staff. The new position will be dedicated to doing patrols in rural areas. He adds that it will be difficult to quantify if a peace officer will deter rural crime. While a level two peace officer is able to enforce the Traffic Safety Act, they do not carry a firearm and are not able to investigate criminal matters.
“We have to start someplace, and that’s where we chose to start. This peace officer is going to be more dedicated to travelling the gravel roads and doing the rural visibility side of it,” said Wittstock.
He hopes the presence will make criminals think twice.
“The RCMP is doing as good of a job as they can do, but we in Kneehill County, we have five different detachments patrolling the county,” he said. “You could think ‘that’s great.’ But you can also look at it like there are five different areas, and we are on the extremities of these police detachments,” he said.
The county also announced it would be hiring a Regional Fire Chief. Wittstock says this is not a new initiative.
“We have had somebody in that position since 2004,” said Wittstock. “It has been two or three years that the position has been vacant, and we chose to fill it again.”
“It came to our attention last fall with the dry conditions. There were wildfires in Wheatland and we had a wildfire here. We felt we needed someone who will really pay specific attention to our rural residents as far as supplying the right equipment, having the right kind of stuff for those fires, they bust through in a hurry and do a lot of damage.”

Standard Co-op closing doors

standard coop

   The Standard Co-op made the difficult decision to close its doors and has begun liquidating its stock.
    On February 22, the Co-op held a special meeting to consider a special resolution for the voluntary dissolution of the cooperative. The vote required two-thirds of the membership to support, and 58 of the 65 assembled membership voted in favour of dissolution.
    “It got to a point that it wasn’t making the money, so we had to do something,” said Standard Co-op president Darrell Larsen.
   Larsen explains the Co-op has operated for about 40 years. Initially, it took over and amalgamated two grocery stores in Standard and then added a hardware store.
   “Through the years it was good, we had a hardware store, and for a country store, it was exceptional, you could just about get anything,” he said.
   “As the year goes on, the economics dictated some things and we kept losing money. It came to a point this year, it was the end. We couldn’t carry on any longer and had to vote for dissolution.”
   He adds there are many factors including the low margins on groceries, as well as different shopping patterns that contributed to the store’s struggle.
   Sales have dropped about 23 per cent from 2013 to this year. So far, in 2018, the Co-op was about $20,000 behind in sales compared to the previous year.
   “We made the decision to quit now. If we would have kept going for another six months then we would probably have no money and we would go into bankruptcy. So it’s a lot better to end it now when you have something,” said Larsen.
   He says he has heard rumblings of a preliminary plan to introduce some sort of store in the community for essentials.
   The last day for the Standard Co-op is March 17, and currently, they are liquidating their stock. With the liquidation, they are hoping to pay their bills and creditors, and any remaining funds could be distributed to the membership based on equity. The Co-op has hired Ken Edey as the liquidator.
    “We tried hard. In the last 10 years, we saw we were losing money and we couldn’t figure out how to make it, and it just got to the point that enough is enough,” said Larsen.

Hanna RCMP investigating animal abuse

The Hanna RCMP is investigating an incident that resulted in an injury and death of a family dog.

On Saturday February 24 a rural family noticed their dog had a severe injury. A vet assessed the dog and determined that the injury was significant and could have been caused by a gun shot. Due the severity of the injury the dog was put down to prevent any further suffering.

It is a criminal offence to wilfully cause unnecessary pain, suffering or injury to an animal. There is also legislation that allows livestock owners to protect their livestock from dogs that are in the act of pursuing, worrying or destroying the livestock.

The RCMP is looking for anyone that has information regarding this investigation. Information can be provided directly to the Hanna RCMP Detachment at (403)854-3393 or anonymously through Crime Stoppers.

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