mr.x
Feb 12, 2009, 1:22 AM
B.C. regional police force touted
B.C. mayors debate creation of a provincial police force before RCMP contract expires in 2012
By Frank Luba and Christina Montgomery, The Province
February 11, 2009
Metro Vancouver chairwoman Lois Jackson on Tuesday called for a mayor’s meeting to address regional policing as a wave of gang violence has Lower Mainland residents living in fear.
With six shootings in seven days, mayors are considering whether a regional force would be a better way to combat violent, mobile gangs who have left a trail of bloodshed.
Jackson, the mayor of Delta, isn’t among those who favours a regional force, preferring her own independent Delta Police.
“It’s local, it’s transparent, it’s accountable,” said Jackson. “And we have one of the lowest crime rates.”
She likes the ‘no call too small’ approach of her police, who are overseen by a police board.
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said the week’s violence has underlined the need for a regional police force to co-ordinate action against gangs. “Gangs are running rampant,” said Robinson, who believes local forces are limited by their boundaries and jurisdictions.
“It's a crucial change that will take political courage from the Solicitor General to implement. A number of smaller municipalities are against it, but the issue of gang violence crosses municipal boundaries. If we were to design the police system from scratch, we wouldn't want the fragmented model that Metro Vancouver currently has, we'd want something that shares resources and manpower. As a region we need to demand better.”
Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said he thinks Vancouver should accept the fact that the city’s policing costs are high, but Vancouver is always first with benefits.
“There are people who don’t come into Vancouver for hockey games, they come down for bad purposes,” said Corrigan.
“Vancouver had the Stanley Cup riots, but I’ll take the riots if they give me the Canucks. Vancouver, with a quarter of the region’s population, gets almost all of the benefits. The only time I hear them talking on a regional basis is when they want to spread the trouble.”
B.C. Solicitor General John van Dongen said policing in the Lower Mainland has evolved to the point that serious crimes are tackled regionally, with agencies such as the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team and the B.C. Integrated Gang Task Force.
“I’ve talked to many different police chiefs, and the RCMP, and I think that our integrated teams are very effective on these issues,” said van Dongen. “Policing is a local cost, and we would need a high degree of consensus, because it wouldn’t be our government’s decision to impose it.
“We do, in effect, have regional policing on the serious crime issues.
“Even if you had a regional force, you would have to have specialized teams to fight these serious crimes.”
MLA Mike Farnworth, the NDP’s Solicitor General critic, said regional policing should be studied in detail in advance of 2012, when the province’s contract with the RCMP comes up for renewal.
“We need to do that work, so the public knows when government makes that decision we’re doing it for the right reasons.
“The RCMP contract is up in 2012. Once that contract is signed, it’s too late.” Farnworth said clearly policing needs to be changed in light of the recent spike of violence.
“It’s absolutely disgraceful,” said Farnworth. “The status quo is not good enough. The procedures that have been in place for the last five years have not been working.”
Jackson wants mayors and their staff to discuss the situation soon, “hopefully in March.”
“We would like to share with other communities what has worked for us,” said Jackson.
“It is really ‘no call too small.’ Why isn’t it going right in other areas?” said Jackson.
Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts doesn’t like the idea of a regional force, either. But she likes the way the Surrey RCMP detachment operates and how it integrates with other jurisdictions.
“I think we have the best of both worlds,” said Watts.
She thinks the answer is better education to fight crime, along with stiffer sentencing and improvements to the court system.
“Our officers, no matter where they are, are bogged down in paper work,” said Watts.
Because Crown counsels are understaffed and overworked they settle for plea bargaining.
“It’s ‘Let’s Make a Deal’,” said Watts. “That’s not good for anybody.”
While West Vancouver Chief Constable Kash Heed has been vocal in support of an integrated force, West Vancouver Mayor Pam Goldsmith-Jones pointed out that was Heed’s personal opinion.
Satisfied with strides made by her municipal force, Goldsmith-Jones wasn’t prepared to take a stand on a regional force.
But she did point out that West Vancouver and the two North Vancouver municipalities are currently completing a joint review of policing on the North Shore.
“We’re looking at ourselves as a sub-region,” she said. “We want to know if there is more we should be doing.”
Port Moody Mayor Joe Trasolini, whose community has its own police force, figures a regional police force would reduce the number of officers in his community by pulling officers to high-crime areas such as downtown Vancouver and Burnaby’s Metrotown.
“I think the issue with gun violence is the fact that we allow peopole to carry guns without consequences,” said Trasolini.
“The criminals go to court, they get paroled, they don’t get convicted.
“If people are caught with automatic weapons, they should go to jail for 10 years.
“People say that taking the criminals and putting them in jail won’t solve the problem — well, it would solve my problem for 10 years.”
West Vancouver Police Chief Kash Heed, who worked for more than two decades on Vancouver’s streets, applauded Robertson’s approach.
Heed, who has long argued for a regional force, said Tuesday the “limited approaches” used to deal with gang activity now “just delay the violence or displace it from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.”
A regional force would “break down some of the silos that do exist” and fix a “balkanized” system, Heed said.
Teams and integrated task forces provide “a Band-Aid solution,” he said, but they don’t provide one of the most important things that police and the community need: a single person who the public can hold accountable for how well the battle against gangs is being waged.
“We have crime of this magnitude, and no one individual to hold accountable. Accountability is a massive, massive part of being able to deliver an effective police [response],” Heed said.
“For example, in West Vancouver if an incident here was gang-related, I would have the responsibility to deal with it, ensure it would not happen again, get in front of it.
“Part of my strategy would be to ensure it would not happen again in West Vancouver. So if it happened in North Vancouver, I guess you could say I’ve been successful.
“When I look at some of the initiatives by other chiefs, a lot of it is to get it out of their jurisdiction,” he said.
“We need to be tough on gangs, we need to be tough on the social conditions that breed them, but we need put in place comprehensive gang strategy. “If there’s a better way to do business, we should be doing that.”
© Copyright (c) The Province
B.C. mayors debate creation of a provincial police force before RCMP contract expires in 2012
By Frank Luba and Christina Montgomery, The Province
February 11, 2009
Metro Vancouver chairwoman Lois Jackson on Tuesday called for a mayor’s meeting to address regional policing as a wave of gang violence has Lower Mainland residents living in fear.
With six shootings in seven days, mayors are considering whether a regional force would be a better way to combat violent, mobile gangs who have left a trail of bloodshed.
Jackson, the mayor of Delta, isn’t among those who favours a regional force, preferring her own independent Delta Police.
“It’s local, it’s transparent, it’s accountable,” said Jackson. “And we have one of the lowest crime rates.”
She likes the ‘no call too small’ approach of her police, who are overseen by a police board.
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said the week’s violence has underlined the need for a regional police force to co-ordinate action against gangs. “Gangs are running rampant,” said Robinson, who believes local forces are limited by their boundaries and jurisdictions.
“It's a crucial change that will take political courage from the Solicitor General to implement. A number of smaller municipalities are against it, but the issue of gang violence crosses municipal boundaries. If we were to design the police system from scratch, we wouldn't want the fragmented model that Metro Vancouver currently has, we'd want something that shares resources and manpower. As a region we need to demand better.”
Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said he thinks Vancouver should accept the fact that the city’s policing costs are high, but Vancouver is always first with benefits.
“There are people who don’t come into Vancouver for hockey games, they come down for bad purposes,” said Corrigan.
“Vancouver had the Stanley Cup riots, but I’ll take the riots if they give me the Canucks. Vancouver, with a quarter of the region’s population, gets almost all of the benefits. The only time I hear them talking on a regional basis is when they want to spread the trouble.”
B.C. Solicitor General John van Dongen said policing in the Lower Mainland has evolved to the point that serious crimes are tackled regionally, with agencies such as the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team and the B.C. Integrated Gang Task Force.
“I’ve talked to many different police chiefs, and the RCMP, and I think that our integrated teams are very effective on these issues,” said van Dongen. “Policing is a local cost, and we would need a high degree of consensus, because it wouldn’t be our government’s decision to impose it.
“We do, in effect, have regional policing on the serious crime issues.
“Even if you had a regional force, you would have to have specialized teams to fight these serious crimes.”
MLA Mike Farnworth, the NDP’s Solicitor General critic, said regional policing should be studied in detail in advance of 2012, when the province’s contract with the RCMP comes up for renewal.
“We need to do that work, so the public knows when government makes that decision we’re doing it for the right reasons.
“The RCMP contract is up in 2012. Once that contract is signed, it’s too late.” Farnworth said clearly policing needs to be changed in light of the recent spike of violence.
“It’s absolutely disgraceful,” said Farnworth. “The status quo is not good enough. The procedures that have been in place for the last five years have not been working.”
Jackson wants mayors and their staff to discuss the situation soon, “hopefully in March.”
“We would like to share with other communities what has worked for us,” said Jackson.
“It is really ‘no call too small.’ Why isn’t it going right in other areas?” said Jackson.
Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts doesn’t like the idea of a regional force, either. But she likes the way the Surrey RCMP detachment operates and how it integrates with other jurisdictions.
“I think we have the best of both worlds,” said Watts.
She thinks the answer is better education to fight crime, along with stiffer sentencing and improvements to the court system.
“Our officers, no matter where they are, are bogged down in paper work,” said Watts.
Because Crown counsels are understaffed and overworked they settle for plea bargaining.
“It’s ‘Let’s Make a Deal’,” said Watts. “That’s not good for anybody.”
While West Vancouver Chief Constable Kash Heed has been vocal in support of an integrated force, West Vancouver Mayor Pam Goldsmith-Jones pointed out that was Heed’s personal opinion.
Satisfied with strides made by her municipal force, Goldsmith-Jones wasn’t prepared to take a stand on a regional force.
But she did point out that West Vancouver and the two North Vancouver municipalities are currently completing a joint review of policing on the North Shore.
“We’re looking at ourselves as a sub-region,” she said. “We want to know if there is more we should be doing.”
Port Moody Mayor Joe Trasolini, whose community has its own police force, figures a regional police force would reduce the number of officers in his community by pulling officers to high-crime areas such as downtown Vancouver and Burnaby’s Metrotown.
“I think the issue with gun violence is the fact that we allow peopole to carry guns without consequences,” said Trasolini.
“The criminals go to court, they get paroled, they don’t get convicted.
“If people are caught with automatic weapons, they should go to jail for 10 years.
“People say that taking the criminals and putting them in jail won’t solve the problem — well, it would solve my problem for 10 years.”
West Vancouver Police Chief Kash Heed, who worked for more than two decades on Vancouver’s streets, applauded Robertson’s approach.
Heed, who has long argued for a regional force, said Tuesday the “limited approaches” used to deal with gang activity now “just delay the violence or displace it from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.”
A regional force would “break down some of the silos that do exist” and fix a “balkanized” system, Heed said.
Teams and integrated task forces provide “a Band-Aid solution,” he said, but they don’t provide one of the most important things that police and the community need: a single person who the public can hold accountable for how well the battle against gangs is being waged.
“We have crime of this magnitude, and no one individual to hold accountable. Accountability is a massive, massive part of being able to deliver an effective police [response],” Heed said.
“For example, in West Vancouver if an incident here was gang-related, I would have the responsibility to deal with it, ensure it would not happen again, get in front of it.
“Part of my strategy would be to ensure it would not happen again in West Vancouver. So if it happened in North Vancouver, I guess you could say I’ve been successful.
“When I look at some of the initiatives by other chiefs, a lot of it is to get it out of their jurisdiction,” he said.
“We need to be tough on gangs, we need to be tough on the social conditions that breed them, but we need put in place comprehensive gang strategy. “If there’s a better way to do business, we should be doing that.”
© Copyright (c) The Province
