It didn’t take long after being named the city’s top cop for Darin Rappel to make his mark as a crimefighter.
Just one week after he was introduced as the successor to Shaun Wright as superintendent of the Prince George RCMP came the announcement of the city’s biggest-ever illicit drug bust.
A break and enter report at a house in the 4400 block of Fifth Avenue led to the seizure of nearly 40 kilograms of fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine and cannabis, a large quantity of counterfeit cigarettes and $500,000 in cash, all linked to organized crime.
One tip from a concerned citizen brought an immediate police response that made history.
Rappel echoed Wright’s observation that the influence of gangs is becoming more obvious in Prince George, and other BC cities are experiencing that as well.
“It was once considered a Lower Mainland issue and now it’s recognized as a provincial issue,” said Rappel. “Frankly, where there’s money to be made, gang activity will follow. Drugs and that kind of activity, we’ve seen a steady increase.
“There’s more of a market for hard drugs and gangs will go where there’s the most profit. Illegal cigarettes have always been an issue,” he said. “It’s very profitable and I think that’s what drives it.
“One of the nicest things about Prince George, with 80,000 people, we will notice your activity at some point in time because it’s a commodity-based product and you have to sell your product. In order to do that you have to mix and mingle with the community, so you will attract attention, and you will find good citizens in the community that will report that to us and give us that starting point to leap off into an investigation.
“Because we’re not that huge, somebody always seems to notice something that’s out of sorts and will make a report to us and we can follow up to determine if there’s activity or not. The vast majority of policework, we rely on the community to at least give us a starting point.”
Before he joined up as an RCMP officer 23 years ago, from 1996-2000 Rappel was a high school teacher in Williams Lake, the city where he started his RCMP career in 2001 after graduating depot training in Regina. Now he’s in charge of a force of 160 officers as commanding officer of the Prince George RCMP detachment.
Rappel’s dad and grandfather were both police officers, as is his brother, and it was always in the back of his mind that he would keep up the family tradition. Born in Penticton and raised on the family cattle/grain farm near Spirit River, Alta., Rappel served seven years as the inspector of the plainclothes division in Prince George before he was named superintendent.
Based downtown on Victoria Street and at North District headquarters on the western edge of the bowl on Fifth Avenue, this is the largest police force in the northern half of the province covering a territory that’s nearly as big as France.
“I like the North, started in Williams Lake and made my way back to the North and I was happy to try for the job,” Rappel said.
“The community is different. I often hear people in city council and others in the community talk about how northern folks are a little bit different, a little unique, and I think that is the case and it requires unique solutions for policing, and that has to do with the vast area we have,” he said.
“We’re a hub city for all manner of reasons and that also includes being a hub for some criminal activity as well, which requires different ideas and different approaches to policing. We carry a very heavy file load, comparatively speaking, to other detachments of a similar size. There’s just more crime. The vast majority of crime we investigate, especially violent crime, is by known offenders, and typically the perpetrator and victim know each other.”
Prior to his move with his family to Prince George, Rappel worked in Kamloops for the RCMP’s crime, property crime and the professional responsibility unit.
Rappel said the organization is doing “way better” at recruiting new officers across Canada and Prince George is seeing the effects of that increased interest in policing as a career choice.
“In my experience it looks like we’re pulling (new recruits) from large centres and I’d like to see more rural and smaller-centre applicants,” said Rappel. “I think urban folks growing up in a big city, that’s home to them, and of course they’re signing on the dotted line with the RCMP and are willing to go anywhere, but they might have a calling to go back to a big urban centre.
“So if we can recruit more in places like this, and have people come back to Prince George and the North, it’s a unique area and a unique type pf policing and it would be fantastic to have local people more interested in joining the force.”
Part of Rappel’s job is meeting regularly with community partners to discuss crime trends. He also sits on the mayor’s community public safety committee that was an offshoot of the town hall discussion at the Civic Centre in April that stemmed from homelessness, poverty, crime and drug use, particularly in the downtown core.
“We have to look at all the ideas because some of the conventional techniques we’ve been doing for years just don’t seem to be working as well as they once did,” said Rappel.
Body-worn cameras are being implemented Canada-wide in the RCMP and Prince George officers will have them sometime this fall. While that will help police gather evidence, it also increases the workload of sifting through the footage and documenting the relevant video clips for each case.
“Detachments throughout the province are preparing for that - we will be one of the pilot areas, one of the early phases - all media information about that and the public engagement piece that we will take part of has yet to be delivered to us but that’s coming,” said Rappel.
“It’s an objective eyewitness, that’s what a camera is. Any video, whether it’s off a doorbell cam or off a police officer’s chest or off a cell phone that’s watching an event, still requires a witness to interpret what it is. You still need the analysis, so in lot of regards it can’t necessarily stand alone, but it’s a fantastic piece of evidence. As we move forward the province will come out with more engagement and guidelines on how that works.
“If there’s a new way of doing policing that will make us more efficient and help us increase our success in regards to public safety, I want to be a part of that.”
