Olympic Games‘ gain won‘t be Kelowna‘s loss when it comes to policing

Ron Seymour 2009-09-22 Kelowna daily Courier:

Kelowna will be better policed during the Winter Olympic Games even though 10 per cent of the city‘s RCMP detachment will be assigned to Whistler, council heard Monday. Fifteen of the detachment‘s 141 officers will be helping with security during the duration of the Games, Kelowna RCMP Supt. Bill McKinnon said. However, there will be no court proceedings during the Games, so officers will be able to spend more time on the streets. Also, no RCMP officers are allowed to take holidays during the Games. “So, our numbers will actually be up here during the Olympics,” said McKinnon, who is one of the 15 city RCMP members who will be in Whistler during the Games. Another 10 RCMP officers from the rural detachment, which is responsible for policing West Kelowna and other outlying areas, will also be redeployed for Games duty, so the Central Okanagan‘s total policing contribution to the Olympics will be 25 members.

In other policing news, McKinnon said drunk-driving charges were up 50 per cent so far this year, to 257 between January and August, compared to 170 in the same period in 2008. “This has been a priority for us,” McKinnon said, explaining that police are pulling over more suspected drunk drivers. He lamented that so many people still get behind the wheel while impaired. Some good policing news: auto thefts are down, from 1,033 at this point last year to 964. “That‘s something we‘re quite pleased with,” McKinnon said, acknowledging that car and truck thefts had recently become a problem after steady declines attributed mostly to the introduction of the bait car program.

Kelowna RCMP had hoped to get provincial funding for a second boat to patrol Okanagan Lake next year, but Victoria has said no money is available. The one boat available to police, McKinnon said, is “not big enough, not fast enough or large enough” to adequately patrol the lake during the summer. Council heard that the Canadian Coast Guard, which no longer provides a service on the lake, had been about to sell one of its boats, valued at $200,000, to the Kelowna RCMP for the knockdown price of $28,000. However, coast guard officials changed their mind, McKinnon said, “when they realized they were almost giving it away.”