Drug crime and break-and-enters dropped sharply last year compared to 2007, Kelowna city council will hear Monday. After several months of not presenting crime statistics to council, RCMP Supt. Bill MacKinnon will be delivering some good news when he provides his report. The number of offences was down in four key crime categories and up in two others, year-over-year statistics show. The biggest drop was for drug offences, where the number of charges plummeted from 3,200 in 2007 to just 1,200 last year, for a decline of 63 per cent. Break-and-enters fell by nearly one-third, from 1,378 to 960, and crimes against persons – covering such things as assaults, robberies and domestic disputes – fell 16 per cent. “I think these numbers are a very good sign that things are going in the right direction,” Mayor Sharon Shepherd said Saturday.
Charges laid under provincial liquor laws were also down nearly a third, from 2,200 to 1,600. But, after several years of decline credited to the Bait Car program, reports of vehicle theft spiked last year, rising to 1,100 to 870 in 2007. “That is a bit curious, because I know when the Bait Car program was first introduced it was a huge success in terms of reducing the number of vehicle thefts,” Shepherd said. And reports of thefts with a value of more than $5,000 rose from 83 in 2007 to 123 in 2008.
The overall statistical trend appears encouraging, but it may come with a caveat. On several occasions, MacKinnon has told Kelowna council that the introduction of a new record-keeping system last year complicates year-to-year comparisons. The system, known as Prime, is designed in part to improve communication between various police detachments around the province. But it is time-consuming for RCMP members to use, MacKinnon has repeatedly said, suggesting police may not always enter all the details of more minor calls. It‘s not very efficient, McKinnon told council in late January, for officers to spend 20 minutes detailing the circumstances of a minor event or call that might have required just 10 minutes to resolve. Instead, they just move on to the next call.
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Don Quixote Note:
- Prime Audit: Audit of the Implementation of PRIME by the RCMP
- PRIME-BC is the “Police Records Information Management Environment” for the province of British Columbia. PRIME-BC is designed to streamline the records management system (RMS) and link it to the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system and be accessible to members on the road using their mobile workstations. Frequently Asked Questions
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