New data initiative helps identify top criminals in Alberta

Alberta law enforcement agencies have joined forces to identify and eliminate the province’s top criminals.

Details of the new data system were announced on Friday. This is an RCMP-led initiative that allows different police services in Alberta to share information about criminals with each other.

“The truth is criminals don’t care about borders,” said RCMP Supt. Mike McCauley.

“They operate across jurisdictions and harm communities across the state.”

The new system helped officers identify Alberta’s top 10,000 criminals and arrest almost 1,000 of them over a two-week period.

“That’s a pretty strong number,” McCauley said. “Normally in a month it would probably be around 1,200. So that’s pretty significant.”

The charges include serious crimes such as theft, robbery, drug trafficking, sexual offenses and attempted murder.

Almost all of the offenders identified were repeat offenders, McCauley said.

“In each community, the crimes they committed would not have marked them as the primary criminals of this platoon,” McCauley said. “But when we combined our data, we realized they were among the top 1,000 offenders in the state.”

In the Edmonton region alone, McCauley said the data helped execute 250 warrants and arrest 108 people; four of them were among the top 100 offenders.

“Forty-five criminals each had two arrest warrants, for a total of 226 charges among the 90 warrants,” he said. “There were three arrest warrants for each of the nine criminals on a total of 76 charges… So we’re talking about individuals who are causing great harm to our communities.”

A similar operation is planned to be carried out in Calgary and southern Alberta soon.

Participating officers cannot work on the initiative year-round, so one or two large-scale operations are planned each year.