Williams Lake to call on province, feds to deal with prolific offenders

“These continued motions to bring negative attention to the city of Williams Lake are making it so doctors and other professionals see these in our headlines and are less likely to want to move here. And I’m growing wary of these motions that attempt to skirt the law and around senior forms of government,” said Moses.

“I believe we should be focusing on the effectiveness of addressing repeat offending that has been provided by the provincial and federal government reviews on repeat and violent offenders in recent years – and this is not in that direction.”

According to a report from city staff, municipal jail cells in B.C. are not within the control of local governments. Rather, they are under provincial and RCMP jurisdiction.

The report notes several other flaws in this plan, including higher demands on RCMP resources, transportation times to other communities and potential local staffing impacts.

“The RCMP indicate they would continue to operate the jails using RCMP members and that would be overtime costs for the city. I don’t understand why we would want to spend even more money from our taxpayers for legal fees at this point. It makes no sense to me,” said Councillor Joan Flaspohler.

“We’re the same as everywhere else, and yes, it’s not great. We need to pressure the higher levels of government.”

Following discussion, council members voted unanimously to put pressure of the provincial and federal governments to take action on prolific and repeat offenders.

Mayor Surinderpal Rathor said his office has applied pressure before and will continue to do so.

“There is no lack of push on senior levels of government from the mayor’s office,” said Rathor.

“It’s consistent whenever I talk to any of these ministers myself or with Councillor [Sheila] Boehm’s involvement at the provincial level.”

by Elora McCormack

Williams Lake to call on province, feds to deal with prolific offenders

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