Residents looking to report a crash now have a new place to go. The Grande Prairie Collision Reporting Centre is now open to the public in the lobby of the Eastlink Centre.
This is the first reporting centre in Canada for an RCMP policed community. Commanding Officer of the Alberta RCMP Deputy Commissioner Todd Shean says they were approached by the City of Grande Prairie about bringing it to the area.
“One of the reasons we picked Grande Prairie is because Grande Prairie is an innovator; they continually approach us with any ideas that are innovative in the delivery of police services so they were one of the ones at the forefront asking for this.”
It took around five years to bring the centre to the city and because it was fully funded by licensed insurance providers like Statefarm and All-State there was no cost to the city or the RCMP. Shean says the centre was needed to take some of the pressure off of local mounties.
“From January to July of this year an estimated 1,600 non-injury collisions have taken place in the Grande Prairie area which translates into about 3,000 officer hours. If we could have those 3,000 hours translated into the collision centre… that means our officers can be out on the road and can focus on other things like our crime reduction efforts.”
Residents will be able to file a collision report, take pictures of the damage, and start the insurance process all from one location. Shean says he would like to see more facilities like it open in the province once the results of this project come in.
“We’re going to share the results of the project with our other communities and my personal feeling is that once they see the innovation and how effective this is, other communities will be knocking on our door.”
The centre will be run by staff from Accident Support Services Ltd. who operate 32 centres around the country. The facility will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday.
