The Red Deer Lacombe Community Crime Watch Association is hosting their annual General Meeting and Symposium next week at the Lacombe Memorial Centre.

One of the things they will be focusing on is how rural and urban municipalities can work together to help cut down on the issue of crime for everyone, something Treasurer of the Association and Lacombe County Councillor Barb Shepherd says is already happening here, to a small degree.

“Lacombe City Police and the RCMP that police the rural communities around Lacombe, our Rural Crime Watch Group have already had Lorne Blumhagen, who is the chief of police for the City of Lacombe, come to some of our meetings and we do talk about what’s happening the City of Lacombe and what’s happening in the county and surrounding areas and what can we do to better work together.”

A representative from the Waterloo Regional Crime Prevention Council in Ontario will be speaking at the general meeting, to share some strategies that have worked for them to reduce crime.

Shepherd says the criminals don't care about jurisdictional boundaries, making the need for increased cooperation even more apparent.

“I think that a lot of the criminals are sleeping in the towns and going out to the country to do their jobs, and then some of them end up doing their jobs in town too right. So I think this is something as a community that we really need to get action together, as opposed to isolating the urban for the rurals”.

The public is invited to attend the two day meeting on February 16th and 17th, as they hope to develop a comprehensive community approach to combating rural crime in our area. .

The cost is a $100 per person, which includes food Friday evening and all day Saturday, as well as a banquet Saturday night that includes live entertainment.

For tickets, you can click here to visit their Facebook page.