From October 19th to 21st, member of the RCMP's Manitoba Integrated Violent Offenders Apprehension Unit, or MIVOAU, arrested 28 different people in several Parkland communities.
Officers were in Dauphin, Grandview, Winnipegosis, Sandy Bay First Nation, and Ebb and Flow First Nation as part of the unit's goal to locate and arrest violent offenders, and were assisted by several RCMP units, including the West District General Investigation Section, and West District Crime Reduction Enforcement Support Team.
Sgt. James Ries, NCO In Charge of the MIVOAU, said they conduct operations like this often.
"We try to do operations such as this, or conduct operations such as this one on a regular basis, on any given week our members from the RCMP and Winnipeg Police Service are out in the province pursuing targets who are responsible for some of the province's most violent crimes...these sort of operations, we're serving to enhance the safety of communities throughout Manitoba, we routinely receive information from members of the public that helps our members locating and apprehending violent individuals and reducing violent crime," said Sgt. Ries.
In the RCMP's news release, they said the most notable incident happened in Grandview around 5:30 PM on October 21st, and involved six arrests at one residence, plus a firearm seizure, and the seizure of a small amount of cocaine. Sgt. Ries said the most notable part was the number of arrests.
"There's often a nexus between drugs and firearms and violence, it's not unusual for our members to encounter either drugs or firearms, and any time we do seize firearms or harmful drugs and get them off the streets, we view it as a benefit to the community obviously...there were people arrested for a variety of offences [during the operation] including assault with a weapon, sexual assault, and pointing firearms, just as an example of some of the charges that are faced by some of the offenders that were arrested last week," said Sgt. Ries.
During the operation, MIVOAU members knocked on 143 doors, arrested 28 offenders, seized 3 firearms, and seized ounce of cocaine.
