DEH GAH GOT'IE KOE/FORT PROVIDENCE
Community members are divided on how to deal with break-ins in Fort Providence, but staff at Deh Gah School are focusing on healing.

School staff discovered a break-in to the school around 7 a.m. on Feb. 10, which included two broken interior windows and a discharged fire extinguisher.

RCMP reported two iPad tablets and two iPhone 5s were missing from the school.

This marks the fourth time since September the school was broken into.

The school joins a list of other break-ins throughout the community in recent months.

As community members work to find proactive solutions to cut crime, some feel retribution is the answer while others want to focus on rehabilitation.

The break-in was the last straw for community member Linda Croft, who started an online petition asking Deh Gah Got'ie Chief Joachim Bonnetrouge and Mayor Sam Gargan to banish a group of youth suspected to be responsible for the break-ins from the community. In December, Croft was responsible for launching a Citizens on Patrol group, which spends Fridays, Saturdays and Sunday nights patrolling the community.

"Citizens on Patrol is making a big difference, I think. Instead of hearing about break-ins here, there and everywhere over the weekend, they seem to have stopped. Unfortunately, we don't have enough members to patrol every night of the week," she said.

"We're doing everything we can and it's not stopping - so why not just remove (these youth)?"

So far, Croft's petition has received 42 supporters.

Staff at the school, however, have other ideas. Following a morning spent cleaning up the break-in, staff members took the afternoon off and trekked out to T'elemia camp, where they spent time doing on-the-land activities. According to vice-principal Jeremy Kielstra, spending this time at the wellness camp gave them an opportunity to let out their emotions and express how they felt about the break-in.

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