OLDS — Citizens On Patrol (COP) remains alive after 15 people registered to stay on with the organization during its annual general meeting, held Sept. 29 in the new COP headquarters; the old Search and Rescue building.
As a result of those sign-ups, the group’s president, Gord Bueckert has decided to stay on for another year.
Earlier, Bueckert had warned that if more people didn’t join, the organization would likely disband.
Members of COP are volunteers. They patrol the community looking for any suspicious activity.
COP members are not authorized to do any more than simply observe suspicious people or activities and report them to police.
“The main thing is Olds COP is still going,” Bueckert said during an interview. “We have four board members now, so I’ll stay on for one more year.
“And we have actually 15 people registered as ones who are actually interested in continuing on and who are willing to put some time into it.”
Bueckert said those 15 are the dedicated ones who did all the organization’s patrols last year, so he’s confident they’ll go out and do them again.
“Even if these 15 people do one patrol a month, I mean, there we have seven or eight patrols out, which is better than we’ve done this whole year, anyways. So that’s a good start.”
COP now has a new board of directors for 2020-21.
One new board member is Ken Hunt. The others are Bueckert, Spencer Parrot and Val Schmidt. Their roles will be decided during the group’s next board meeting.
Bueckert is a little disappointed that no new members signed up. However, he’s hopeful that over time, the group’s membership can be at least doubled.
When it first re-formed a few years ago, Olds COP attracted about 70 members. Over time though, many of them lost interest, moved, or got involved in other activities and its membership dwindled.
“We’re not going to get 70 new members like the original take-in, but if I can get 30; if I can double the numbers we have now over this next year, I think that would be pretty promising,” Bueckert said.
The group was shut down last spring for many weeks when the COVID-19 lockdown occurred. A patrol was finally undertaken again just a few weeks ago.
Bueckert said one younger member of the organization wants to go into schools and see if more members can be recruited that way.
He loves that idea.
“Of course, if they’re in school, being out at midnight, driving around isn’t ideal. But so maybe we can even get some parents with their kids going out and doing some patrols, registering,” he said.
“There is room for that. If they’re under age, they have to have a parent’s consent to be able to do this.”
Now that Olds COP remains alive, Bueckert would like to use some of its grant money to buy some furniture so the group can conduct training.
“I feel better about it now. It kicked me back into gear,” he said. “I don’t know, I think it’s going to turn out. I think we’re going to get some new members and I have a good feeling about it.”
