A local resident is looking to city police to change the way they deliver their message about community safety.
Tanya Vrebosch, who is also North Bay’s Deputy Mayor, presented to the North Bay Police Services Board on Tuesday.
She highlighted the opioid crisis and criminal activity and says North Bay is not the only community dealing with safety issues.
“People ask me if it’s still safe in North Bay, in my opinion nowhere is as safe as it was five or more years ago, but it doesn’t mean you have to be housebound. You just need to be mindful of your surroundings and follow sound safety tips,” she said in her presentation.
Vrebosch is asking the board to start the discussion with the public before a strategic plan is done.
“Right now because of COVID, [the police board] technically can’t do public meetings the way that they used to. Not everyone has access to Zoom, they aren’t available during the daytime, Facebook is maybe not everybody’s preferred platform. [I’m] just looking for an interactive platform to get that messaging across, and maybe to change the messaging to get people to feel that level of comfort again,” she says.
Michael Dazé, Deputy Police Chief says there’s ‘absolute’ truth that communities across Canada have changed in the past five years.
“The reality is that it is happening everywhere. I think it is incumbent that we look at the local solutions and say what can we do to make a difference. I think the Deputy Mayor’s point is really looking at that collaboration piece, how do we do this as a group with all the networks and agencies that we have,” Dazé says.
He also says Council will be receiving the Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan in the coming weeks.
“It’s a robust plan that has a lot of strategic actions that is going to say these are things we can do together to enhance community safety and start providing some of that feedback,” Dazé says.
Dazé adds NBPS issues media releases and recognizes the importance of engaging on other platforms, like Facebook and other social media.
“It’s a reason that this year we added a Corporate Communications position with Mr. David Woolley to help us guide that process and how do we do more engagement with the community and from there it sort of goes off, how do we build that and get that feedback,” he says.
Dazé says the Chief (Scott Tod) has committed to looking for opportunities to increase engagement, noting the pandemic has presented some challenges.
