Police in one Canadian capital are suggesting that the city adopt a new method for handling insurance claims.
Police in Edmonton have a crime problem on their hands, and they’re looking at an insurance solution to help ease demands placed on his staff.
Since the energy sector has taken a tumble, Edmonton’s law enforcement officers are reporting a “sharp increase in property crimes and violence,” according to CBC News. The trend comes as a reversal to a period of relative calm since November 2014.
“When oil is up, we're busy. And when oil is down, we're really busy,” Chief Rod Knecht todl the outlet. After acknowledging that emergency calls are “through the roof” compared to the same timeframe last year, Knecht says some of the most dramatic spikes have occurred in assault and domestic violence.
In order to help manage these new pressures on the police department, Knecht is advocating for Edmonton to erect a collision centre. This facility, which already exists in many other Canadian cities, would allow drivers to file their paperwork and begin the claims process in a location that doesn’t require extensive police assistance.
"You wouldn't have three, four, five police officers tied up at the scene, maybe a couple of fire trucks and an ambulance tied up at a scene," he said. "If we were able to go down from 28,000 to 7,000, that puts a lot of police officers back on the street to be catching bad guys."
He believes that the city’s residents deserve at least a one-year trial of such a service, which he wants located in South Edmonton.
There are approximately 28,000 motor vehicle accidents in Edmonton every year, and the city requires that any drivers involved in a collision where damages exceed $2,000 must appear at a police station and file a Collision Report Form.
