ALERT releases annual report

ORGANIZATION AN AID TO POLICING

Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams was established in 2006 as a way to connect law enforcement agencies throughout the province and provide sophisticated law enforcement resources to combat organized and serious crime.

The organization released its 2017-2018 annual report recently, highlighting a number of accomplishments in different areas of investigation.

In the past year, ALERT investigations resulted in more than 680 criminal investigations across the province. There were 336 people arrested and 1,714 charges laid as a result of those arrests. There was $301,057 in civil forfeiture applications made and $1.41 million in proceeds of crime seized.

Staff Sgt. Jason Walper is a Lethbridge member of ALERT and said ALERT acts as a vital connection point for smaller police agencies, particularly when it comes to intelligence and information sharing.

“We know that crime knows no boundaries,” he said. “Criminals try to change jurisdictions often, hoping law enforcement will lose interest or not be able to pursue them because of jurisdictional boundaries. But ALERT allows us to keep pursuing them outside certain regions.

“The information has to get where it needs to go to be effective for us to be able to target those criminals in all areas of the province of Alberta. “It’s very important to us.” As a result of that information-first approach to policing, Criminal Intelligence Service Alberta was able to assess 75 organized crime groups and identified 2,310 people for its 2018 Provincial Threat Assessment.

Another goal of ALERT has been working to reduce harm and help vulnerable victims. This work, through the Internet Child Exploitation unit, included the seizure of nearly 2,000 devices and resulted in the identification of nearly 135,000 child exploitation videos and photos with 308 terabytes of data analyzed. There were 23 child interventions and 222 Integrated Threat and Risk Assessment Centre (I-TRAC) assessments involving domestic violence threats and stalking cases. ICE arrested 96 suspects in the past year as well.

In regards to efforts to enhance law enforcement capacity, ALERT provided nearly 300 agency assists and trained 2,896 candidates.

Priorities are fluid, but Walper says ALERT will continue to keep up with organized crime and target crimes specifically causing harm, such as fentanyl and carfentanil traffickers.

They will also continue to go after large-scale property crime offenders using the proceeds of their crimes to fund other criminal activities.

ALERT is funded by the Alberta government, and $29.1 million was earmarked for the organization in the 2018-2019 provincial budget. ALERTS’ total budget for 2017-2018 was $46.1 million. Follow @JWSchnarrHerald on Twitter