The Sunshine Coast RCMP want to add six new officers to its team, two financed by the District of Sechelt and four over the next two years, who would hopefully be funded by the province.
As the district begins work on its 2025 budget, Sgt. Don Newman and Sunshine Coast RCMP Staff Sgt. Jenniefer Prunty made a presentation to council at a special committee of the whole meeting, Dec. 18. Newman used a collection of 40 slides to explain their request for the two officers, one which detailed the fact the District of Sechelt has seen consistent increases annually in population, violent crime, property crime and the number of cases each officer is handling. This past summer, the district held two community safety meetings in response to concerns about rising crime.
Newman also pointed out the Coast’s geographic isolation and the 80 kilometres of highway RCMP officers have to cover adds to the demands of the job.
“We’re limited in our access to assistance,” said Newman. “It’s not like Burnaby or Surrey.”
This past summer, the district held two community safety meetings in response to concerns about rising crime.
He noted the complexity of policing has also increased since a court decision in 2017, resulted in an increase in the legal demands needed in order to obtain a conviction. Those changes to provincial policing standards relate to cases dealing with violence in relationships, missing persons investigations and mental-health/crisis interventions.
Up to and including October, Sunshine Coast RCMP responded to six per cent more files (8,630) in 2024 than during this same time in last year, which follows an eight per cent increase year-over-year for 2022 (8,403) and 2023 (9,446).
The two officers requested from the district include a mental health liaison. Newman told council mental health and addiction-related incidents continue to be a major community and policing priority and account for an increasing percentage of frontline policing workload. This position would be dedicated to proactively working with mental health and addictions clients in support of Vancouver Coastal Health and RainCity Housing and Support Society.
The second position would be a municipal traffic officer, who would be dedicated to enforcing bylaws within Sechelt and working motor vehicle accidents. In addition to motorized traffic, their mandate would be to enforce pedestrian traffic issues, including loitering and complaints associated with the homeless population.
Prunty explained that while the detachment covers the lower Sunshine Coast, these two positions would largely be dedicated to Sechelt, to deal with the increase in crime/issues the district is experiencing.
Coun. Brenda Rowe thanked Newman and Prunty for their presentation.
“I'm sure you can understand the situation we're in, because you're smart people, and I understand that [Sechelt] is the majority, the largest amount of calls, in part being the service centre and other things that are out of our control,” she said. “And the things that have been brought to us, not out of anything other than, as I said, where other healthcare services are centred, and no money has come from that from the province. So, you know, these are tough things for us to think about and consider, how we communicate to taxpayers when considering these are really, really important issues that we're dealing with…”
According to the district, in 2025 the estimated cost of one officer is $250,000. For a DOS taxpayer, that would work out to $170,000, including equipment and benefits.
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