Those are two of the items high on Vernon RCMP Insp. Steve McVarnock’s wish list for 2009. “I have a budget proposal in place but I won’t get into the numbers until things are decided upon in January,” said McVarnock. “I’m looking to create a dedicated city traffic enforcement team, and I want a dedicated team disrupting the groups of people involved with drug trafficking on the streets. “I want that dedicated uniformed presence to engage the people in these groups and make it uncomfortable for them to get set up and start plying their trade.” Having such dedicated groups in place would help ease some of the workloads on general duty members who could only work on such projects if they had time, or were specially assigned. If the inspector gets his wishes for more bodies, he’s going to need some place to put them. Seventeen Vernon RCMP employees will work out of the basement of city hall, starting early in the new year, but McVarnock said that’s just a short-term fix. “I’m focused on working with the city and E division (provincial RCMP headquarters) on getting a blueprint together for a new building for the detachment,” said McVarnock. “We will definitely need enhanced building space within five years.”
McVarnock went outside the building and tapped into the RCMP’s reservist program, where retired members are brought back as constables for limited duty, to help with such areas as traffic enforcement, and establish a presence at Silver Star Mountain Resort. “We now have three dedicated reserve constables for use in the city and rural areas,” said McVarnock. “I thought we did a lot better job of enforcement over the last three months with the use of the reservist constables.” Police presence is a big plan for 2009, continuing on what McVarnock called a fine year for policing in the North Okanagan in 2008, where local RCMP helped disrupt the flow of local criminal activity.
Year-to-date totals through to the end of November show crimes in Vernon down in just about every statistic. The main exceptions are crimes against persons, such as robberies and assaults, which are up 20 per cent over 2007.And the biggest challenge is theft of motor vehicles. “That’s up 48 per cent,” said McVarnock, referring to 456 thefts of motor vehicles, compared to 309 in 2007. In the downtown, crimes like mischief, theft under $5,000, break-and-enters and drug offences are all down. “The only increase is crimes against persons, that’s up seven per cent,” said the inspector. The Vernon detachment has helped reduce crime by utilizing five undercover projects that dealt with the sex and drug trades. They added a motorized golf cart during the summer, which enhanced their community presence, and made use of a mobile command post to help curb downtown crime. The local detachment took further aim at those involved in the drug trade by using programs to seize houses which had grow operations. “We have six houses with a total value of $3 million that have had restraining orders placed on them,” said McVarnock. “That brings to 13 the total houses we’ve restrained in the last two years.”Of those 13, four have been forfeited to the federal government, and one to the provincial government. The remaining eight are currently in the legal process, waiting to be dealt with.”
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