HUNTER: Collaborating for community safety

Premier Eby recently announced the Safer Communities Action Plan which aims to address some of the complex challenges around building safe and secure communities. Many of these issues were identified by the BC Urban Mayor’s Caucus and are also outlined in a report commissioned by the province to identify key actions needed to improve public safety.

The top three actions include:

● Bringing back the prolific offender management program that ran from 2008 until 2012. The program had success bringing together community partners such as police, mental-health and community support service providers to monitor and help offenders break the cycle of repeat offending and was shown to reduce repeat offending by as much as 40 per cent in the first year;

● Establishing a dedicated provincial committee to coordinate supports for people with complex healthcare needs in the criminal justice system; and

● Supporting work by the BC First Nations Justice Council to develop a pilot program based at the Prince George First Nations Justice Centre to better support Indigenous people who come into conflict with the law.

While it’s not clear at this time how this announcement will translate in terms of more support and capacity in Kamloops, it’s probably a safe assumption we will see some positive changes in the community.

The plan includes a total of $76.5 million in spending. The funding will cover $12 million for repeat offender response teams, $44 million over three years for Indigenous justice centres, $10 million for peer-assisted care teams, $3 million for integrated mobile community crisis response by police and healthcare workers, $3 million a year to expand virtual bail hearings, and $4.5 million over three years for brain injury services in 13 B.C. communities.

I’m hoping this will mean Kamloops will finally get the second Car 40, where an RCMP officer is paired with a mental health nurse. The current Car 40 doesn’t operate 24/7 and a second one that operates in the evenings and on weekends has been requested by the city for years. If not a second Car 40, then maybe a Peer Assisted Care Team similar to one recently established in North Vancouver.

Making virtual bail hearings more accessible in the region will help reduce the number of people coming to Kamloops for hearings from outlying areas. These individuals are often discharged without a place to go, and this is a contributing factor in the rise in homelessness in places like Kamloops and Prince George. It’s been suggested this is also a contributing factor to the rise of criminal activity in our city.

I did a bit of digging to see what the numbers tell us about this increase. Some of this information is pulled from summaries done by local media and some is from RCMP reporting.

The most recent statistics provided by Statistics Canada show an increase in crime with total crime in Kamloops in 2021 reaching a five-year high of 13,379 incidents, while the number of people charged (778) hit a five-year low.

The 13,379 crime files in Kamloops is an increase from 12,515 in 2020, 11,997 in 2019, 10,157 in 2018 and 10,614 in 2017. The number of charges from those files has trended down: 778 in 2021, compared to 934 in 2020, 1,307 in 2019, 1,383 in 2018 and 1,410 in 2017.

Kamloops property crimes last year were well above the provincial average of 4,216 per population of 100,000, coming in at 7,624. Violent crime in Kamloops is also up sharply compared to five years ago. There were 2,551 violent criminal code violations in 2021 in Kamloops, up from 2,430 in 2020, 2,236 in 2019, 1,691 in 2018 and 1,421 in 2017.

While Kamloops RCMP responded to 11,983 total reported files from April to June 2022, a decrease of 1 per cent when compared to the same time period in 2021, overall instances of property crime in the same time frame increased 12 per cent.

In an interview in response to these numbers, Kamloops RCMP Superintendent Jeff Pelley said much of this activity can be attributed to prolific offenders.

“Prolific offenders are typically involved in a wide variety of crimes that affect our communities. We think that by focusing on these prolific offenders and working with the partners to facilitate offender access to services, again that may address mental health disorders and substance addiction issues, and will continue to reduce crime throughout our area,” Pelley said.

“Experience has demonstrated that a small number of criminals are responsible for the majority of some of these drivers going up.”

Roughly 80 per cent of files are linked to about two dozen individuals. It is also important to note many of these individuals aren’t necessarily homeless, but are often preying upon the most vulnerable in our community.

In response to this increase, the Kamloops RCMP is redirecting resources to the crime reduction unit and putting more resources towards dealing with prolific offenders as part of the detachment’s crime reduction strategy.

The new funding investments made by the province will help support these units and their efforts while ensuring other areas of policing don’t suffer.

Staffing up these units will require more than dollars though; it also requires more people signing up to be RCMP officers. In Kamloops, there is funding for 134 officers but many positions remain vacant for a variety of reasons, including that there just aren’t very many graduates completing the training at the RCMP Academy, Depot Division in Regina. I hope the province’s plan comes with a strong recruitment strategy.

While this action plan is rolling out and the resources are making their way to Kamloops, each of us can continue to do our part in building a safer community. We can look out for our neighbours, join or create a Block Watch, report crimes so there’s a business case for resources (you can report minor crimes to the Kamloops RCMP online), and do our part to prevent crime and help others feel safe.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.

by Sadie Hunter

HUNTER: Collaborating for community safety

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