By Jason Luciw - Kelowna Capital News - May 18, 2008
There are no “what-ifs” on the subject of a new Westside police detachment, as far as RCMP Supt. Bill McKinnon is concerned. “I’ll be totally honest, I haven’t even thought ‘if not.’” The region’s police chief told the Capital News the building is needed and ideally it would already be built. “We’ve worked on this for four years. We desperately need it. (Westside officiers) are packed in, for lack of a better word, like sardines over there,” said McKinnon, who is based out of the Kelowna detachment. The Kelowna rural detachment, which includes Westside’s RCMP force, currently operates out of leased space in a strip mall on Old Okanagan Highway in downtown Westbank. Construction of a new building was to begin in late winter, with hopes RCMP officers could move in by early 2009. “Actually, it would have been nice to see the building under construction two years ago,” said McKinnon. For the Central Oknagan’s top cop, talk of an RCMP building in Westside began soon after he became head of the Kelowna detachment in May 2004. To date, Westside council has yet approve construction of the facility, as it awaits cost confirmation. Tenders are due back at the end of the month and will tell if the detachment can be built on budget.
Efforts to build a new RCMP building began in four years ago with the Central Okanagan Regional District, which governed Westside at the time. First there was land acquisition, buying the old highways works yard on Pamela Road from the B.C. Ministry of Transportation at a cost of $1.67 million. The controversial alternate approval process was used but only 44 signatures against the plan (out of a possible 18,300 eligible voters) were gathered opposing the purchase. The alternative approval processes requires signatures from 10 per cent of eligible voters to stop a municipality’s plan. Two years later the regional district used the process again to approve borrowing $8.2 million to build police building. At that time, 34 letters of opposition were registered. The new building will be an 1,858-square metre, two-storey structure, with room for up to 70 officers and support staff. It will contain a room designed to be an emergency 9-1-1 dispatch centre.
One thing missing from the new RCMP building in Westside will be jail cells.And that’s fine with McKinnon “If you are looking at cost benefit, (a cell block) doesn’t make any sense,” said McKinnon. It is more efficient and cost-effective to have the only cells in Kelowna, where the most support is available, he added. “If we are truly an integrated detachment—one detachment—it doesn’t make much sense for Westside and Lake Country to have cell blocks. That’s why we became an integrated detachment.” As far as jail space goes, what the area really needs is a provincial prison, said McKinnon. “We’re being used as a remand centre, the closest jail being in Kamloops.” McKinnon said 10 to 15 prisoners are serving weekend sentences in Kelowna, using cells that should be available for local police calls. But, in order to run proper trials out of the nearby Kelowna Law Courts, the RCMP must make room for the accused. “If (there is) a murder trial on the go, we’ll end up keeping the accused here all weekend. If we don’t, the trial can only be held Tuesday to Thursday because we’d have to have them heading back (to Kamloops) on Friday and coming (here again) on Monday.” As for the Westside RCMP building, McKinnon can’t wait to see it finished.The building is expected to house 38 officers to start.
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