By Tim Petruk - Kamloops This Week Published: May 30, 2009
It’s 1 a.m., and two Mounties pull up outside a Kamloops home. They park on the street, get out of their vehicle and walk to the door. Raising a gloved fist, one of the cops knocks loudly three times. A few moments later, a man comes to the door and talks briefly with the officers.Within seconds, he goes back to bed and the cops leave.
He’s a career criminal and the Mounties are checking to make sure he’s abiding by his court-ordered curfew. It’s all part of the prolific-offender management program — and part of the dramatic reduction in crime in Kamloops. “Basically, we identify people who are repeat offenders in our community through statistics and convictions in court,” Kamloops RCMP Insp. Yves Lacasse said. “This group of people that we have, called the prolific offenders, are closely monitored by the police.” The prolific-offender program started in Kamloops in 2007 with 32 chronic crooks. A year later, another 15 were added to the list. This month, 10 more criminals were labelled prolific, bringing the total number to 67. Lacasse said the program involves plenty of work for Mounties, but the payoff is worth it. “Three-hundred and sixty-five days a year, we go and knock on these doors. And we’ll knock on them more than once,” he said. “If the curfew’s 11 o’clock, we might knock at 11 and again at midnight if we think that person is playing with police. “Maybe we’ll knock at two or three o’clock — then we know they aren’t going to leave to go and do a break-and-enter. It’s about being proactive.”
And that approach has had a serious impact on local crime, according to a well-known Lower Mainland criminologist. “It’s hard to imagine — and I’m not exaggerating in the slightest here — that any jurisdiction on the entire planet has been as successful at reducing crime as Kamloops,” Darryl Plecas, professor at University of the Fraser Valley, told KTW. “Basically, over the last year, Kamloops has damn near cut crime in half.” The statistics are staggering. In 2006, before the prolific-offender program was implemented in Kamloops, local police received 3,853 reports of break-and-enters, theft of vehicles, attempted thefts of vehicle and thefts from vehicle — the four main categories used to gauge repeat offenders. Last year, there were 1,866 calls, a decrease of 51 per cent.
Plecas said he uses the Kamloops policing model — including the prolific-offender program — as an example for efficient crime reduction. “Kamloops is just an outstanding example of being intelligence-led,” he said. “I would say, if anybody wants to do crime, Kamloops is the last place you want to do it. It truly is an inspiration for an ability to turn around a crime problem.” But, it’s not as easy as throwing labels on criminals and knocking on their doors. Kamloops Mounties have a full-time intelligence analyst, who monitors crime and looks at a variety of statistics before deeming crooks prolific. There are 12 categories considered, including the number of negative contacts with police, number of charges, number of convictions, history of property crime, history of substance abuse, employment situation and associations with other criminals.Lacasse said it all comes back to being proactive.
“What we used to do as a police force is we would wait for the phone to ring,” he said. “We would say, ‘OK, ma’am, thank you for your phone call.’ Then we would go out and try to solve your problem. “Now, with the prolific-offender program and what we’ve done with our crime-reduction model, we’ve decided to be proactive. We’re going after the bad guys — quite often before the crimes are being committed.” Most people wouldn’t like being woken up by a knock on the door at midnight — and again a few hours later.But Lacasse said it comes down to protecting the community. “It’s not harassment,” he said. “If you’re a good citizen in this community, you’ll be happy with what we’re doing. If you’re a criminal, you’re going to feel the heat because we’re going to be after you — and we’re going to be after you until you change.”
According to police, 17 prolific offenders have sought rehabilitation for drug addictions since the program began, while another 20 have left town. “If you can change and if you can get back on the right track, that is a wonderful thing,” Lacasse said. “But, if you don’t, and if you’re not willing to do that, then you’re going to get picked on by the police. “If you’re a criminal — and we hear it from many of them — many of them are saying that they want to leave town because they find the pressure from the police almost unbearable.” Lacasse said the prolific-offender program isn’t about the criminals — it’s about the safety of Kamloops. “Our primary goal is to make sure that this community is a safe community,” he said. “That’s our number one objective.“We’re not going to solve every crime, we can’t be everywhere at every time, but we are trying extremely hard to make this a very, very safe community.”
And, according to Plecas, Kamloops Mounties are succeeding. “I can’t say enough good things about Kamloops,” the criminologist said. “If somebody were to ask me if anywhere else in the world had crime dropped as much as it has in Kamloops, the answer would be a resounding no.”
along the first hundred block of Wolverine Avenue in Tumbler Ridge, BC. RCMP and the Tumbler Ridge Fire Department responded to the area immediately and found one home had been completely destroyed and two others severely damaged. Both hydro and natural gas to the area were disconnected to aid in the firefighting efforts. The Rocky Mountain Rangers were also called in to assist.
