by Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

NNSL (Oct 22/97) - Yellowknife's heart has become colder and it has nothing to do with the onset of winter, says a senior RCMP member.

At a meeting Thursday to gather input on solutions to youth crime and street violence, RCMP Staff Sgt. Dave Grundy offered two recent examples of the cool regard people have had for others in trouble:

Three weeks ago an 80 year-old man was brutally attacked by a teen. "While this was happening a large number of people were standing around, and didn't offer any assistance," said Grundy.

Two weeks ago a woman, walking downtown with her five year-old child, suffered a seizure. People walk around her as she lay on the sidewalk. "She came out of the seizure and went into a store to call the police and ambulance," said Grundy. "The owners of that store said they didn't want to get involved and pushed her out."

Grundy used the examples to reiterate a point he and others have made -- that the community as a whole is ultimately responsible for the care of its citizens.

"Community-based policing is a concept where police are only as good as the people they police. We need help," said Grundy. He was responding to a question from downtown business owner Russ Heslep.

Heslep, complaining of a rash of broken windows, noted he had two visits from police during a recent breakage.

"Both of them, on separate occasions, said, it was out of control on the streets and had to leave."

Grundy said the incidents occurred on a particularly busy night and highlighted the RCMP's limitations.

"The out-of-control part is Friday and Saturday nights when the bars let out downtown and bottles start flying and fights start," he said.

But he added that anyone who thinks crime is on the increase in the city is mistaken.

"Nothing has really changed," said Grundy. "There isn't any more youth hanging around downtown in summer than there were five or three years ago."

Grundy said any perception that crime has increased is the result of change in RCMP communications policy and the media's reaction to that change.

"Three and a half years ago the RCMP really told the media nothing about what was going on," said Grundy. "Then we adopted a policy to tell media everything."

Media give the committal of crimes big play, he said, but follow-ups on charges and convictions of perpetrators "either never made the media or would be a really short story in the back pages of the classifieds."

The Yellowknife RCMP detachment has 30 police, one for every 566 citizens. During a 24-hour period 23 police will be on duty. With the shifts weighted toward busy weekend nights, there are times when the entire city is policed by only two officers, said Grundy.