The Craik detachment of the RCMP is recommending people lock their homes and cars after a number of break-ins and vehicle thefts in Davidson sometime between Saturday, June 16 and the early morning hours of Monday, June 18.

Const. Kevin Morrissette said the RCMP is investigating after a few unlocked cars and one business on Railway Street was broken into and cash and possessions stolen.  He added two cars were also stolen from the town of Davidson including a red Pontiac G5 from the 200 block of Hamilton Street, which was later found abandoned on Highway 11 just south of Girvin, and a green Dodge Spirit from the 900 block of Government Road later found at the Davidson Sports Grounds.

“It is very much a good idea to keep your house and vehicle locked and also keep your vehicle parked in a well-lit area,” said Morrissette.  “Well-lit places do deter thieves from doing anything like that because they don’t want to be identified.  They don’t want to be detected and they tend to shy away from that.

“People sometimes think that if someone wants to break into their car, that they’ll break in,” he said.  “They’ll smash a window or something anyway.  The determined criminal will just smash a window, but then again if your vehicle is parked close to your home, smashing a window would create noise and that is going to deter them.  For example, in this case, they didn’t go into vehicles that were locked.  If it’s easy and convenient for them to just open the door and root through your car, it’s more tempting.”

The warmer weather does tend to bring about more people passing through town, especially with the major highway nearby, but the problem of convenience crimes occurs year-round.  If a transient or even a group of neighbourhood kids see an unlocked car or easy object to grab and run, they could be more tempted to go for it, said Morrissette.

“We recommend that people lock the doors of vehicles and not leave any keys inside the vehicles,” he said.  “If you have a motion light at your home that also helps as far as people breaking into garages or sheds and things like that.”

As for the Davidson crimes, the Craik RCMP are asking for the public’s assistance in finding these crooks and the Saskatchewan Crime Stoppers will also pay up to $2,000 for any information which leads to an arrest.

“I can’t speculate if it was kids around town,” said Morrissette.  “At this point, we don’t have any information as far as who it was.”

The search for a new physician for Craik and the Five Hills Health Region has the mayor of Davidson concerned, but also hopeful that the parties concerned are starting to “look at the bigger picture” in their hopes to alleviate the added pressure that is being put on Davidson’s physician.

“It has a large impact for us because the doctor in Craik shares on call services with the doctor in Davidson,” said Mayor Mary Jane Morrison. “What they’ve been doing up until recently is every other weekend (one of) the doctors serves calls and they share those calls through the week as well.

“That hasn’t been consistent through the last little while because Dr. Maree has sort of been in the process of moving or working away from Craik,” she said. “As a result our doctor here has done his complete share of calls, but then there has been a disruption of service because she hasn’t been able to fulfill her obligation.”

Morrison said if you consider the populations of the towns of Davidson and Craik and the surrounding area that is also being served by those two doctors, Narinda Maree in Craik and F. Lang Bayona in Davidson, you would come up with more than 5,000 people in need of help.

“If you think of our whole region as a large town that has two doctors and all of a sudden you have one, then there is a real concern there,” she said.

Maree is moving to Moose Jaw in August to accept a physician’s job there after serving the community of Craik for the past 16 years. The Five Hills Health Region is in negotiations with another doctor to replace her, but a contract has yet to be finalized, to the frustration of Craik residents and Hilton Spencer, the Reeve of the Rural Municipality of Craik.

To read more please see the June 25 print edition of The Davidson Leader.