This mobile unit will focus on gang activity and violence
The Alberta RCMP is launching a new unit to monitor crime in rural communities.
Following a $2 million investment from the provincial government, the RCMP announced part of the funding will support the creation of a new Rural Organized Crime Team (ROCT).
The ROCT will be “a mobile unit made of a core group of officers focused on gang activity and violence linked to drug and firearm offences,” an RCMP release says. “The team deploys to communities experiencing highest levels of crime, using data-driven intelligence to identify and target priority offenders causing the greatest harm.”
Additional law enforcement resources will also support the ROCT in its mandate.
The support from the provincial government was part of an $8 million investment into reducing crime across the province.
In 2025, 490 shootings occurred in Alberta with about one third resulting in serious injury or death, the RCMP says.
Recent data from Statistics Canada shows rural communities continue to experience high levels of crime.
A May 2026 report on police-reported crime across Canada in 2024 showed the violent Crime Severity Index (CSI), a measure of the volume and seriousness of police-reported crime, is almost 50 per cent higher in rural areas compared to urban communities.
Rural Alberta had a CSI score of 141.9 that year, and an overall rural crime rate of about 10,830 incidents per 100,000 people, Stats Canada says.
And overall, Alberta’s CSI in rural areas has increased by 24 per cent since 2014.
Other datapoints from the report include:
- Rural crime in Canada as a whole has increased by 33 per cent since 2014
- Rural Canada accounted for 14 per cent of the population but 22 per cent of violent crime
- Rural police services reported about one in six property crimes