Hot on the heels of a Statistics Canada report that pegged Kelowna as the most weakly policed city in the country, the local complement of Mounties was poised to be bolstered. City council was ready to release funding for hiring of two additional officers early on in Thursday’s budget deliberations—investigators for sex crimes and fraud divisions—despite a report from internal staff to maintain the status quo. Policing is the most weighty part of the city’s budget. Even without new hirees, the cost increased this year by $858,000 due to a combination of wage increases and mandated pension hikes.
But Kelowna RCMP Supt. Bill McKinnon’s annual impassioned plea for more police officers appeared to resonate with elected officials. “When members go call to call and response times are slow, it’s because they’re backed up in the queue,” he said, explaining Wednesday night offered an example of the pressures on the force. A fatality on the highway called for seven cars while, at the same time, numerous other police were attending an electronics warehouse where a significant theft was underway. “They had a number of TVs, ready to go out the door…how many members does that take, plus all the domestic disputes we attended?” he said. “It’s stressful for the members. They’re breaking down…I’m working them and I’m a hard driver, believe me.”
Last year, when McKinnon made a similar request, he was looking for 21 new officers and received five. This year he was asking for five, and got approval for two. Accounting for the new officers, it means the entire contingent will sit at 148. The Statistics Canada report on policing that came out Wednesday, said that the number of police officers in Canada had reached its highest numbers since 1981, growing to approximately 69,000 members, a number that in turn reflected the number of crimes solved. With an extra 2,000 members hired in the first four months of 2010 the officer-to-citizen ratio climbed two per cent, amounting to 203 officers for every 100,000 people. Locally, however, that number is far below the status quo. The Kelowna Census Metropolitan area was assessed to have only 107 officers for every 100,000 in population. To secure the two extra Mounties, city council—which was largely committed to keeping with a two per cent tax increase—will have to figure out how they can ante up the related $260,000 in cost increases during Thursday’s budget deliberations, which continued well past the Capital News press deadline. That means another cost will have to be axed. By deadline, the required shuffling had yet to be made, though councillors expressed a desire to bolster the police force.
Fire department expands
Police aren’t the only organization that will have its numbers inflated in the year ahead. Kelowna Fire Department did some thoughtful accounting, and by reducing the amount of dollars for overtime, they were able to commit to taking on four new members in July. Council was told that bolstering the number of fire fighters will be a priority in years to come, once the Glenmore fire station is eventually built. That will require 20 full-time firefighters and it would be “impossible” to hire them in one shot.
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