POLICE AMALGAMATION (2006)
There has been much debate relating to the amalgamation and/or regionalization of police services in BC. At the present time, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and 11 independent municipal police organizations provide service across British Columbia. Those include independent police departments in: Abbotsford, Central Saanich, Delta, Nelson, New Westminister, Oak Bay, Port Moody, Saanich, Vancouver, Victoria, and West Vancouver.
This patchwork quilt of municipal police forces and RCMP detachments across the province is filled with departments that often manage their cases differently and lack the specialized training being provided to officers elsewhere.
A number of police forces lack the resources to do day-to-day work, let alone commit officers to work on multi-agency teams. These types of obstacles have hampered major multi-jurisdictional investigations, like the case of dozens of missing women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Two decades after Clifford Olson began abducting and murdering children on the Lower Mainland, BC police agencies still face major roadblocks when trying to catch organized, mobile serial predators.
Such examples as the Olson case and Pickton trial have exploited the lack of guidelines covering how and when police agencies come together to form joint task forces when a predator begins crossing jurisdictions. When municipal police forces act alone, they can often miss critical information to an investigation that might have been detected under a wider coverage area.
Issues of public safety are of particular concern in areas where municipal boundaries are immediately adjacent, sharing common boundaries.
Municipalities are feeling the impact of provincial downloading and increased costs of police service delivery. Amalgamation of certain police services may provide uniformity of enforcement, specialization, better coordination of resources, ongoing, in-service training, fewer infrastructures, improved efficiency and the avoidance of duplication.
Municipalities in British Columbia of more than 5,000 persons are required to bear the expense necessary to maintain law and order. The Police Act gives such municipalities three choices: they may establish their own police force, they may contract with the provincial police agency, or they may contract with another municipal police force.
Ultimately in BC, the Solicitor General is responsible for policing. Where it is evident that amalgamated, regional police services would field more effective policing than a multitude of local services, the provincial government has the power to legislate such action.
The province demonstrated this power in January of 2003, when it amalgamated the Victoria and Esquimalt police departments. According to a survey funded by the province and released in October of 2004, the Victoria/Esquimalt amalgamation of police departments carried successful results. The $25,000 poll, contracted by and paid for by the province, surveyed 400 randomly selected households, questions adults over 18 who lived in Esquimalt prior to amalgamation. It found that 93 per cent of those polled perceived Esquimalt to be safe of fairly safe, and that overall satisfaction with police services was 86 per cent, with seniors and women being most pleased.
Arguably the most potentially disastrous police control is found in the capital region of British Columbia, an area policed by four independent police forces and three RCMP detachments. Central Saanich, Saanich, Oak Bay, and the amalgamated Victoria-Esquimalt departments all run independently of each other in Greater Victoria. Divided police resources along city borders make little sense from a practical point of view. Few criminals or policing problems confine themselves within a municipality. Activities such as prostitution, the drug trade, organized gangs and violent serial offenders have regional, national, and international patterns.
In the summer of 2003, then Solicitor General Rich Coleman stated publicly that if municipalities in the Greater Victoria region did not further integrate police services, the provincial government would force them to merge into a single agency. No substantial integration has happened between the police departments since that statement and a public opinion poll on the issue, taken in May of 2003, indicated that 70 per cent of Greater Victorians support the idea of one amalgamated police force for the region.
In larger urban and metropolitan areas police amalgamation would be beneficial for several reasons, including:
• Policing costs -. reduction in policing costs realized through integrated infrastructure and management
• Lack of integration – serious crimes unit, sex crimes unit, financial crimes section, strike force, gang unit, dispatch unit, human resources, purchasing, K9, administration functions, forensic identification, and detention facilities
• Population shifts – Thousands of people work and live across municipal boundaries and are exposed to multiple police forces and jurisdictions
• Unequal administration of justice – Each police department carries its own operational policies, leading to regional disparencies in law enforcement
• Safety - Crime is approached separately in the region as opposed to cohesively,
jeopardizing public safety
THE CHAMBER RECOMMENDS
That the Provincial Government address the issue of regionalization of police services in the Province of British Columbia by:
1. establishing provincial standards for the integrated delivery of police services by police forces where municipal boundaries are immediately adjacent; and,
2. where necessary, legislating amalgamation of police services in areas where established standards are not being met and where uniformity would benefit service delivery and public safety.
