An update on the Langley City Crime Prevention Task Group

Last Thursday was the second meeting of the Langley City’s Crime Prevention Task Group. Task group members are from the general-public, Langley City, RCMP, Downtown Langley Business Association, and Greater Langley Chamber of Commerce.

You can review my notes on the first meeting by reading a previous post; at the first meeting, we discussed the task group’s mandates, and our work plan to meet the mandates. The eight mandate items are as follows:

1. Promote a CPTED review at geographic areas where there are high levels of crime. This could be on private properties or City facilities and parks.
2. Allocating adequate budget to implement the CPTED recommendations [on City property, facilities, and parks.]
3. Partnering with the Downtown Langley Business Association and Chamber of Commerce to introduce an incentive program for property owners to implement crime prevention initiatives including CPTED.
4. Implementing a communication strategy that send the signal that City facilities and parks are monitored and that criminal behaviour is not tolerated.
5. Increase RCMP foot and bike patrol in the downtown core and at crime hot spots.
6. Increase police presence at geographic areas where there are high levels of crime.
7. Promote and support Crime Watch in residential neighbourhoods.
8. Promote and support Business Watch in commercial and industrial areas.

The RCMP already have programs in place to target geographic areas where there are high levels of crime, and increase “on the street” presence including bike patrols. The task group felt that these items were already covered by the RCMP, and decided to mark these two mandate items as complete.

One of the keys to ensuring the success of these RCMP programs is to report all crime or suspicious behaviour. Due to this, task group members felt that encouraging the reporting of all negative activity to the RCMP is critically important. As a result, one of the action items for the task group will be to find the most effective way to promote the reporting of all crime.

Another of the mandates of the group is to promote CPTED reviews. These reviews are done as a free service by the RCMP to advise businesses and residents on how their building’s design, lighting, and landscaping can be modified to reduce negative activity. The task group will be working on how to encourage building owners to take part in these reviews, and implement the recommendations of the reviews.

Finally, the task group will be focusing on how to reinvigorate the Block Watch and Business Watch programs.

With the second Crime Prevention Task Group meeting complete, and general action items agreed upon by members, the task group will now be getting to work to fill in the details of the action items to help prevent crime in our community.