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By Dylana Kneeshaw

SAFETY AND SECURITY SELECT COMMITTEE

Latest City of Kamloops data shows spike in protective service calls around business sectors

Jul 24, 2025 | 4:21 PM

KAMLOOPS — At a meeting on Thursday (July 24), the City of Kamloops Safety and Security Select Committee received an update into what areas of Kamloops are seeing increases and decreases in calls for emergency services and Community Services Officers (CSOs).

The city recently updated how it tracks where police, fire and CSOs are needed, and now uses corridor reporting. Data is collected from a few specific corridors around the city, including two sections of Tranquille Road, a portion of Valleyview, Victoria Street and Victoria Street West, Columbia Street West and a segment of Notre Dame Drive.

Data presented in a verbal report from Protective Services served as a snapshot into how often emergency responders have been called out recently, and to which neighbourhoods.

“With these, the breaking out of the corridors, it’s super helpful for council to be able to zero in on areas of concern,” Councillor Katie Neustaeter noted by the end of the meeting.

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So far in 2025, Kamloops Fire Rescue has responded to more medical calls than actual fires in most of the tracking areas. KFR Chief Ken Uzeloc notes the Tranquille corridor, specifically, saw a rise in medical calls after the addition of the Pathways Access Hub.

“We’re seeing that having a centralized location of some of those unhoused individuals that are in shelters, we routinely get a higher number of medical calls in those areas than we would have spread out,” he explained.

A few of the fire call-outs came in quick succession back in June, and when asked about those incident by Neustaeter, Uzeloc clarified that the bulk of which are suspected to be human-caused.

“Two areas where there were remnants of an encampment or encampments close by, but the rest were very definitely camping or cooking related.”

On the Community Services side, CSOs — formerly called bylaw officers — tracked more calls for service in most areas of the city. But Community Services Manager Will Beatty pointed out that a noticeable portion of those increases partly came from more proactive calls, where officers responded to something they came across themselves and weren’t called out to by residents.

“Again, in those downtown cores, with the North Shore and the south shore, we’re seeing ourselves being at about a 20-to-40 per cent proactive rate for calls for service.”

In general, criminally-related calls increased along both Tranquille corridors, where elsewhere, Kamloops RCMP Superintendent Jeff Pelley explained reductions were tracked in Valleyview and along Victoria Street West.

“Our main drivers for Criminal Code (calls) are mischief, which involve the loss of enjoyment of property so a refuse to leave or problematic. A cause disturbance, which could be a number of factors or a theft, mainly the main driver of theft and we’re seeing this in some of our business corridors is theft under $5000 or shoplifting.”

A motion was passed to have the Safety and Security Select Committee and the North Shore Business Improvement Area’s liaison meet with business owners to discuss concerns related to social disorder and other topics.

This week’s update wasn’t a complete collection of the 2025 data and another update from Protective Services is anticipated at a later date.