Axing of crime unit takes us backward
Jack Knox, Columnist
Times Colonist
May 22, 2014
“My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that."
— Alice In Wonderland
Victoria has a lot of what former Times Colonist writer Norm Gidney used to call our imaginary friends — the problems we talk and talk and talk about without actually getting anything accomplished.
Amalgamation. Sewage treatment. The Malahat. The ferries. The Colwood Crawl. Co-ordinated policing. Think Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, awakening to the same song, over and over, never moving ahead.
But it wasn’t until this week that we actually went backward on an issue.
Crimefighting in Greater Victoria just took a hit with word of the impending collapse of the Regional Crime Unit. Once one of the most successful of the capital’s multi-department police units, it will disappear at year’s end, not because it isn’t needed, but because the dozen municipalities here in Dysfunction-By-The-Water couldn’t run a three-float parade without bogging down in arguments over where to go, who’ll pay for the gas and which clown gets to drive.
And there’s no incentive for them to abandon their parochial thinking, because the provincial government, the only body with the power to force them to smarten up, doesn’t have the political will to do so.
A decade or so ago, with the province threatening to amalgamate Victoria’s four municipal departments and three RCMP detachments, municipal governments argued they could make the alternative of integrated units — Amalgamation Lite — work.
But with both the Liberals and NDP subsequently declaring an unwillingness to impose regionalization on unwilling municipal councils, the pressure has eased.
The government is focusing on big picture, provincewide stuff: a real-time, 24/7 intelligence centre, communications centres, homicide teams. The first item on B.C.’s policing plan might involve looking at new structures — “from further integration to the regional delivery of services” — but the province isn’t going to waste energy forcing a group hug at bayonet point.
It’s not as though the municipalities don’t try to get along. Led by a committee of RCMP detachment commanders and municipal deputy chiefs, local departments all contribute to a domestic violence unit, Crimestoppers, a mental-health team and more. The Vancouver Island Integrated Major Crime Unit — the murder squad — has recently been bolstered by the participation of Saanich (and, effectively Oak Bay, since that municipality contracts out to Saanich for such investigations). Local municipal forces have a longstanding emergency response team and a joint crowd-control unit.
Sometimes, though, things don’t work out. Victoria, Central Saanich and Oak Bay are about to leave the integrated municipal dive team, meaning a reversion to the old model, in which the job is left to Saanich Police, which will bill its neighbours when called out.
That’s the flaw with the current system. Municipalities have the option of opting in or out at will, based on a cost-benefit analysis of what’s best for them. Nobody takes the broad view, looking at what’s best for the region.
The result is messes like the loss of the Regional Crime Unit. The RCU, which originally drew on officers from four municipal departments and three RCMP detachments, should be a no-brainer. It cherry-picks thieves, targeting the small group of prolific offenders responsible for so much property crime in our area. (When it was set up in March 2008, then-solicitor general John Les noted the region had nine bad guys who had been charged with 127 offences between them in just the previous six months.)
Alas, Victoria, complaining that it was shouldering too much of the budget burden, pulled out in October 2009 (the same week the RCU played a key role in the area’s biggest-ever drug bust, in which 22.5 kilograms of cocaine were seized and eight people arrested).
Then Sidney, North Saanich and Central Saanich — none of them exactly crime-ridden — bowed out, figuring they weren’t getting bang for the buck. When Saanich signalled its departure, it was just the last bullet in a twitching body. With just Sooke and West Shore RCMP left, the unit couldn’t survive.
It’s what happens when parochial politics trumps regional thinking.
Chalk one up for the bad guys.
© Copyright Times Colonist
Jack Knox, Columnist
Times Colonist
May 22, 2014
“My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that."
— Alice In Wonderland
Victoria has a lot of what former Times Colonist writer Norm Gidney used to call our imaginary friends — the problems we talk and talk and talk about without actually getting anything accomplished.
Amalgamation. Sewage treatment. The Malahat. The ferries. The Colwood Crawl. Co-ordinated policing. Think Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, awakening to the same song, over and over, never moving ahead.
But it wasn’t until this week that we actually went backward on an issue.
Crimefighting in Greater Victoria just took a hit with word of the impending collapse of the Regional Crime Unit. Once one of the most successful of the capital’s multi-department police units, it will disappear at year’s end, not because it isn’t needed, but because the dozen municipalities here in Dysfunction-By-The-Water couldn’t run a three-float parade without bogging down in arguments over where to go, who’ll pay for the gas and which clown gets to drive.
And there’s no incentive for them to abandon their parochial thinking, because the provincial government, the only body with the power to force them to smarten up, doesn’t have the political will to do so.
A decade or so ago, with the province threatening to amalgamate Victoria’s four municipal departments and three RCMP detachments, municipal governments argued they could make the alternative of integrated units — Amalgamation Lite — work.
But with both the Liberals and NDP subsequently declaring an unwillingness to impose regionalization on unwilling municipal councils, the pressure has eased.
The government is focusing on big picture, provincewide stuff: a real-time, 24/7 intelligence centre, communications centres, homicide teams. The first item on B.C.’s policing plan might involve looking at new structures — “from further integration to the regional delivery of services” — but the province isn’t going to waste energy forcing a group hug at bayonet point.
It’s not as though the municipalities don’t try to get along. Led by a committee of RCMP detachment commanders and municipal deputy chiefs, local departments all contribute to a domestic violence unit, Crimestoppers, a mental-health team and more. The Vancouver Island Integrated Major Crime Unit — the murder squad — has recently been bolstered by the participation of Saanich (and, effectively Oak Bay, since that municipality contracts out to Saanich for such investigations). Local municipal forces have a longstanding emergency response team and a joint crowd-control unit.
Sometimes, though, things don’t work out. Victoria, Central Saanich and Oak Bay are about to leave the integrated municipal dive team, meaning a reversion to the old model, in which the job is left to Saanich Police, which will bill its neighbours when called out.
That’s the flaw with the current system. Municipalities have the option of opting in or out at will, based on a cost-benefit analysis of what’s best for them. Nobody takes the broad view, looking at what’s best for the region.
The result is messes like the loss of the Regional Crime Unit. The RCU, which originally drew on officers from four municipal departments and three RCMP detachments, should be a no-brainer. It cherry-picks thieves, targeting the small group of prolific offenders responsible for so much property crime in our area. (When it was set up in March 2008, then-solicitor general John Les noted the region had nine bad guys who had been charged with 127 offences between them in just the previous six months.)
Alas, Victoria, complaining that it was shouldering too much of the budget burden, pulled out in October 2009 (the same week the RCU played a key role in the area’s biggest-ever drug bust, in which 22.5 kilograms of cocaine were seized and eight people arrested).
Then Sidney, North Saanich and Central Saanich — none of them exactly crime-ridden — bowed out, figuring they weren’t getting bang for the buck. When Saanich signalled its departure, it was just the last bullet in a twitching body. With just Sooke and West Shore RCMP left, the unit couldn’t survive.
It’s what happens when parochial politics trumps regional thinking.
Chalk one up for the bad guys.
© Copyright Times Colonist