The Collision Reporting Centre in Grande Prairie could soon undergo a change that would see Peace Officers and Enforcement Services looking after collision reporting in the city, which is currently being overseen by the RCMP.
Director of Protective and Social Services Chris Manuel says this is a change that city council has been contemplating for some time.
“A couple of years ago the city partnered with an organization called Accident Support Services International and they do the data collection on collision reporting. In large part, that data collection is done for analytical, insurance, and transportation purposes,” he explains.
“It wasn’t really a core policing responsibility so the decision was made to stop paying police employees to take collision reports and pass that on to the third party.”
Manuel feels if the change was made, it would align with other municipalities such as Medicine Hat and Lethbridge. He adds the request was also made because the RCMP as a national organization has computer systems that don’t fully integrate with the collision reporting system used by the third party.
“We have some redundancy that requires us to utilize some staff that wouldn’t normally be required,” he says.
The other change that is being requested is regarding officer deployment for responding to collisions, which at the moment, sees Peace officers attend a multitude of collisions, whether that be injury or non-injury.
“If it’s an injury that may be present but they weren’t taking the actual reporting responsibility, this change would have them taking on that responsibility as well,” he adds.
More steps remain to complete the requested change. The Director of Law Enforcement for the province still needs to approve the application but the discussions have been initiated.
