Police Form Gambling Unit in New Brunswick
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has announced that it will be creating a special unit in Moncton, New Brunswick, ahead of the scheduled opening of a casino in the area next month.
The police stressed that the unit, which will comprise of five special officers, will not focus only on the new casino, but would serve the entire province.
Supt. Wayne Gallant said about the new venture: "It's a provincial unit, it's not just for the casino. It's a gaming unit, so it will deal with illegal gaming that's going on everywhere in the province, not just here in Moncton, but they're going to locate the unit in Moncton."
Gallant said that the RCMP was hoping to leverage resources to ensure that things operate as smoothly as possible with the arrival of the new casino in Moncton, although he did not anticipate any major problems.
One of the responsibilities of the unit will be to help assess how the casino impacts the community over the next year.
If necessary, the RCMP will provide extra police officers.
The new $90 million casino and hotel will be built in the Magnetic Hill area in New Brunswick.
The unit will investigate whether the Greater Moncton area will experience a spike in calls for service or an increase in a certain type of crime.
"We've had great success so far in our crime reduction strategy with the use of a criminal analysis, so basically I'd like to bring some additional capacity on a criminal analysis side to this file, the casino file," said Gallant.
The province still needs to give its final approval on the special unit, and it is not sure when this will happen.
