St. Paul S/Sgt. explains best way to contact RCMP

Good day, I’m Sgt. David Graham.

As the Acting Detachment Commander for the St. Paul RCMP I am often in discussions with local governments/counsels which include Saddle Lake, Goodfish Lake and the town and county of St. Paul.

In these discussions, it has often come up that there are concerns with how calls are answered and dispatched to police. With this being said I thought I would take this opportunity to provide some information which would hopefully answer some questions that arise in regards to these types of concerns.

The administrative phone lines are 780-645-8870 for the St. Paul office and 780-726-3201 for the Saddle Lake office. These phones are staffed Monday to Friday from 8:00 – 4:30 PM.

These phone lines should be used for things such as follow-up on an already existing file, needing to speak to a specific member, inquiries about criminal record checks or collision reports as well as general inquires in regards to the detachment.

If you feel that your complaint is an emergency and you need police immediately you should call 911. This call will be directed to the NAOCC (Northern Alberta Operational Communication Centre) from the 911 dispatcher.

Once a call is received by our NAOCC they will ask a number of questions, potentially some of the same information you have already told the 911 call taker. I know this can seem onerous at times depending on what you are calling about however these are standard operating procedures for our call takers and dispatchers.

By answering these questions, they are able to determine what type of priority your call should be dispatched as. These are dealt with in order of urgency.

Threat to public safety or loss of life calls are the priority for our members. All other call types will be responded to as quickly as possible. To work as efficiently as possible, the Alberta RCMP utilizes a ‘Closest Car’ service.

The closest available member to a call will be dispatched to a call for service even if the call is in a neighbouring jurisdiction.

Additionally, the RCMP has also introduced online reporting. This is for those incidents where you do not want to phone the police but do want to report certain crime types. This was created as a way to still capture crimes being committed and allows police to analyze the data for crime hotspots.

This helps keep police officers in our community on the streets as opposed to completing data entry. To online report you can go to https://ocre-sielc.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/alberta/en

It is important to report all crimes and suspicious activity to police. It may not seem important but it may be the missing link to another file being worked on as well as to capture exactly what is going on within a community.

I hope some of this information helps clarify things for our community members. If you feel you have more questions please feel free to contact me through our administrative line, 780-645-8870.

Contact numbers:

780-645-8870 (St. Paul Office) non-emergency

780-726-3201 (Saddle Lake Office) non-emergency

780-645-8888 and 911 emergencies.