myFM News presents ‘Ask a Cop’, brought to you by Mighty Green Cleaners.
Listeners submitted questions for Halton Police Constable and Media Relations Officer, Ryan Anderson.
A resident was wondering how safe Milton and Halton are compared to other communities. It’s been an ongoing stance by the Halton Police and in mainstream media that Halton is among the safest communities in the country.
Constable Anderson says the numbers from Statistics Canada place Halton in high regard.
A breakdown by the University of Waterloo writes that the “Crime Severity Index (CSI) monitors the severity level of police-reported crime. The CSI measures the overall seriousness of crime from one year to the next by tracking both the prevalence of crime within a community, and the seriousness of the crimes committed.”
Constable Anderson also compares Halton to a list of police services known as the ‘Big 12’, which includes Peel, York, Toronto, Hamilton, Waterloo, London, Durham, Niagara, Windsor, Sudbury, and Ottawa. Constable Anderson says that Halton is consistently the lowest among those communities in terms of crime.
Since 2014, Halton has also had the highest crime clearance rate among the Big 12 police services. That means that frontline officers and investigators in Halton are consistently solving serious crimes at a higher rate (51%) when compared to their peers in other communities.
Constable Anderson feels that the officers only play a part in the big picture. A lot of the work is done by the community, both in assisting in solving crimes through charitable organizations like Crime Stoppers, as well as taking community safety as seriously as many Halton residents do.
A second question that was asked by a listener involved how officers become detectives. Constable Anderson says that it all comes down to ranks.
He says that officers begin as Constables, where there are four separate ranks, or classes. As one climbs the ranks, they take on more responsibility and their duties will change as their title changes.
New positions will always require additional training. Officers are regularly sent to the Ontario Police College for additional courses. Constable Anderson notes that to get his current position as Media Relations Officer he had to receive additional training.
He says that within the Halton Police, officers who qualify and are promoted to Sergeant, following a lengthy application process, who then transitional to an investigative unit will receive the rank Detective.
‘Ask a Cop’ will return next week with more of your questions being answered.
You can also read past ‘Ask a Cop’ segments:
- How fast is too fast? Speeding and snow covered on ‘Ask a Cop’
- Protests, spot checks, and skating on Mill Pond covered on ‘Ask a Cop’
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