Bill might force regional police functions
Les Leyne
Times Colonist Columnist
November 27, 2014
Wally Oppal’s inquiry into the missing women recommended the government create a Greater Vancouver police department to replace the multi-jurisdiction patchwork system that is just as obvious there as it is in Greater Victoria.
There was a serious incident on the weekend at the exact geographic spot that illustrates why people sometimes wonder about the wisdom of having multiple police departments.
A man with multiple stab wounds showed up at a gas station that sits on the Saanich, Victoria and West Shore policing boundaries.
So all three police departments showed up.
RCMP called it a “great example of working together,” which it was. They’ve done it often enough they probably dispense with introductions all around, establishment of order of precedence, agreement on line of reporting, etc. But it was also an example of the oddities that crop up when you have eight police stations representing five forces covering a region with just 350,000 people.
Policing is going to be one of the more sensitive angles in the upcoming review of the amalgamation issue in Greater Victoria. It’s the paramount service that governments deliver, and each one that does so is deeply invested in their version. There will be no changes to the status quo without some big arguments.
But one of the lower-profile bills now being debated in the legislature might change the arguments before they get started. It outlines what will happen from now on when talk turns to changing delivery models for specific police services. It’s the government’s response to a specific recommendation in the missing women inquiry report, buried in a grab-bag assortment of amendments to various laws.
Wally Oppal’s inquiry into the missing women recommended the government create a Greater Vancouver police department to replace the multi-jurisdiction patchwork system that is just as obvious there as it is in Greater Victoria. That was one of the factors that delayed the eventual arrest of the serial killer responsible for the fate of so many of the women.
But the bill responding to that recommendation goes in a different direction. There’s nothing in it about creating one police force for Greater Vancouver. It’s much more about reorganizing specific “specialized services” in law enforcement. The government will be able to stipulate a specialized service, identify an entity to provide it and the municipalities to be covered and set out the funding arrangements to pay for it.
And once those decisions are made, municipalities will be obligated to go along with it.
It’s much more about integrating specific functions across different departments — by decree if necessary — than about merging whole departments.
The Opposition is viewing the changes skeptically. And one Liberal MLA — West Vancouver-Capilano’s Ralph Sultan — doesn’t sound very enthusiastic either. Although he won’t be voting against, he “regrets” that the bill re-emphasizes government’s power to order policing changes without having to put bills before the house.
Surveying policing in B.C., he noted one-third of the RCMP national complement work in B.C., commanded from 4,000 kilometres away. “At the other end of the management extreme, we have the spectacle of eight — count them, eight — separate police agencies spanning south Island … chronically unable to co-operate, it seems, in the supreme challenge of rounding up street-level and property-crime offenders who casually stroll across municipal boundaries.”
Sultan said that despite the “organizational absurdities,” all the departments are creatures of the municipalities that pay for them. And if the government wants to wade into this tangle, “I strongly believe in the merits of debating that issue right here in this house, rather than resorting to the shortcut of order-in-council.”
As to what specialized services could be covered by multi-jurisdictional task forces, Sultan listed a half-dozen likely areas: intelligence databases, a crime lab, homicide (already mostly done), major fraud, Internet crime and dispatch.
His key observation was that if the government imposes compulsory obligations on municipalities to ante up for more ambitious specialized task forces, the revenue models will have to be adjusted.
Victoria has seen two such units — regional prolific offenders and domestic violence — run into problems over funding arrangements.
When the amalgamation studies begin, they’ll be looking at policing with the new law in mind. And it puts more emphasis on integrated units than it does on full mergers.
lleyne@timescolonist.com
© Copyright Times Colonist
Les Leyne
Times Colonist Columnist
November 27, 2014
Wally Oppal’s inquiry into the missing women recommended the government create a Greater Vancouver police department to replace the multi-jurisdiction patchwork system that is just as obvious there as it is in Greater Victoria.
There was a serious incident on the weekend at the exact geographic spot that illustrates why people sometimes wonder about the wisdom of having multiple police departments.
A man with multiple stab wounds showed up at a gas station that sits on the Saanich, Victoria and West Shore policing boundaries.
So all three police departments showed up.
RCMP called it a “great example of working together,” which it was. They’ve done it often enough they probably dispense with introductions all around, establishment of order of precedence, agreement on line of reporting, etc. But it was also an example of the oddities that crop up when you have eight police stations representing five forces covering a region with just 350,000 people.
Policing is going to be one of the more sensitive angles in the upcoming review of the amalgamation issue in Greater Victoria. It’s the paramount service that governments deliver, and each one that does so is deeply invested in their version. There will be no changes to the status quo without some big arguments.
But one of the lower-profile bills now being debated in the legislature might change the arguments before they get started. It outlines what will happen from now on when talk turns to changing delivery models for specific police services. It’s the government’s response to a specific recommendation in the missing women inquiry report, buried in a grab-bag assortment of amendments to various laws.
Wally Oppal’s inquiry into the missing women recommended the government create a Greater Vancouver police department to replace the multi-jurisdiction patchwork system that is just as obvious there as it is in Greater Victoria. That was one of the factors that delayed the eventual arrest of the serial killer responsible for the fate of so many of the women.
But the bill responding to that recommendation goes in a different direction. There’s nothing in it about creating one police force for Greater Vancouver. It’s much more about reorganizing specific “specialized services” in law enforcement. The government will be able to stipulate a specialized service, identify an entity to provide it and the municipalities to be covered and set out the funding arrangements to pay for it.
And once those decisions are made, municipalities will be obligated to go along with it.
It’s much more about integrating specific functions across different departments — by decree if necessary — than about merging whole departments.
The Opposition is viewing the changes skeptically. And one Liberal MLA — West Vancouver-Capilano’s Ralph Sultan — doesn’t sound very enthusiastic either. Although he won’t be voting against, he “regrets” that the bill re-emphasizes government’s power to order policing changes without having to put bills before the house.
Surveying policing in B.C., he noted one-third of the RCMP national complement work in B.C., commanded from 4,000 kilometres away. “At the other end of the management extreme, we have the spectacle of eight — count them, eight — separate police agencies spanning south Island … chronically unable to co-operate, it seems, in the supreme challenge of rounding up street-level and property-crime offenders who casually stroll across municipal boundaries.”
Sultan said that despite the “organizational absurdities,” all the departments are creatures of the municipalities that pay for them. And if the government wants to wade into this tangle, “I strongly believe in the merits of debating that issue right here in this house, rather than resorting to the shortcut of order-in-council.”
As to what specialized services could be covered by multi-jurisdictional task forces, Sultan listed a half-dozen likely areas: intelligence databases, a crime lab, homicide (already mostly done), major fraud, Internet crime and dispatch.
His key observation was that if the government imposes compulsory obligations on municipalities to ante up for more ambitious specialized task forces, the revenue models will have to be adjusted.
Victoria has seen two such units — regional prolific offenders and domestic violence — run into problems over funding arrangements.
When the amalgamation studies begin, they’ll be looking at policing with the new law in mind. And it puts more emphasis on integrated units than it does on full mergers.
lleyne@timescolonist.com
© Copyright Times Colonist