Rural Alberta sign campaign aims to curb crime

A sign for the Crime Stoppers Alberta rural sign program. (Credit: Alberta RCMP)

A non-profit program that takes anonymous tips about crime has started a new rural Alberta campaign to encourage more community participation.

Crime Stoppers Alberta introduced its Rural Sign Campaign Monday alongside the provincial RCMP.

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The campaign sees Crime Stoppers work with rural and Indigenous communities to place signs in high-traffic areas letting people know how to give anonymous tips.

“Programs like this empower residents to take an active role in crime prevention, ensuring that what you see, what you hear and what you know is shared through anonymous tips,” Mark Holik, the chair of Crime Stoppers Alberta, told media Monday. “This information helps our police partners solve crime, keeping our neighbourhoods safe.”

The City of Wetaskiwin and Piikani First Nation are signed up as so-called Crime Stopper Communities. The organization is in talks with other communities to join as well.

Holik said Crime Stoppers has already seen an increase in the number of tips because of the new signs.

“What we’ve found is, through putting these signs up, it gives an opportunity for some of these communities out in the rural areas to, first of all, (provide) a reminder to (residents) that when you do see any kind of criminal activity happening in your in your community, to report,” he said.

“The other thing it does is it really stops the criminals from entering a community, knowing that that community is going to be all over them if they’re doing anything illegal.”