Prince George’s top cop agrees with a consultant's report calling for Prince George city council to approve funding for 19 more RCMP officers and 11 or more additional civilian staff to address rising crime in the city.
Prince George RCMP officer in charge Supt. Shaun Wright called the report “a very fair, balanced and accurate assessment of the situation in Prince George.”
Wright said the proposed increases over five years would address the immediate needs of the detachment and can be achieved, despite labour shortages facing police forces across the country.
“I think it is a very achievable goal, despite the recruitment and retention challenges all first responders are facing,” Wright said. “(But) if we had 200 more, we would find places to deploy them.”
Over the past several years, the detachment has been forced to move officers from units doing community and proactive policing duties to meet the demand for frontline officers and investigators, Wright said.
The report makes specific recommendations aimed at restoring the detachment’s capacity to do community and proactive policing.
The report recommends hiring four school resource officers, a four-member youth liaison team, a four-member community policing team, four neighbourhood police officers, a two-officer Human-centred Engagement and Liaison Partnership (HELP) unit based on the model used by the Edmonton Police Service to work with the city’s vulnerable population, and an additional Car 60 unit (co-funded with Northern Health) which has a mental health nurse working alongside an RCMP officer.
In terms of civilian staff, the report recommends hiring a community policing coordinator, victim services worker, forensic identification specialist, crime analyst, exhibits staff member, Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) system operator, transcriptionist, two mental health workers to work with the youth liaison team, a social worker to work with the missing persons unit, a “peer navigator” for the Prince George Public Library to direct people to social service resources and an unknown number of additional data processors.
“I think there is definitely merit in the recommendations they made,” Wright said. “(But) I see the timeline in the report more as a recommendation.”
The report authors recommended hiring the additional officers over three years, while city staff are recommending the additional officers and civilian staff be hired over five years by adding roughly $1 million per year to the city’s roughly $30 million RCMP budget each year until 2027.
Having a formal Community Safety and Well-being Plan in place to coordinate efforts by different agencies working on crime and social issues, would also be an asset, he added.
Wright said the RCMP are looking at some of the operation suggestions made in the report, including having officers who cannot be on the road because of health accommodations respond to lower-priority calls by phone. The report’s recommendation for multi-tiered policing would require support and direction from higher levels of the RCMP organization.
“The RCMP did have a community safety officer program, we had two here. Nationally, there was a decision to cancel that program,” he said.
Wright said he can understand the frustration in the public about the RCMP’s ability to respond to calls.
“I’d like the public to know we have organized our resources the best we can to respond to emergency calls,” Wright said. “The members working here are very invested (in the community).”
