Prince George RCMP Superintendant Shaun Wright presented Council with his annual report, saying the most significant issue of the year was the steadily increasing number of calls for service.
He explained the issue isn’t going away any time soon and predicts it will continue into 2020.
The number of calls jumped from 43,924 in 2018 up to 47,704 in 2019, roughly translating to 130 calls per day.
The total number has increased by almost 10,000 over 5 years, from 37,777 in 2014.
Beginning in 2019, the RCMP are now required to report each call as an event that occurred unless they can prove the call was unfounded.
“The statistics aren’t really helpful for this year. It’s like comparing apples to oranges,” Wright said.
Despite the increase in calls, Prince George has seen a drop in prisoner rates from 4,434 in 2014 down to 3,234 last year.
This is firstly due to charges not being approved by Crown Counsel resulting in the offender being released with a court date and secondly, sometimes individuals are sent to the University Hospital of Northern BC instead due to potential illicit drug overdoses.
Superintendent Wright says Downtown remains a big priority for police, but a big problem is the practice of harm reduction with no end goal in mind, something he says is enabling problems further.
“The four-pillar approach that’s widely accepted for drug issues is prevention, enforcement, harm reduction, and treatment,” said Wright.
“There has been from what I’ve seen, over the past two years since the opioid situation came to light, a huge focus on harm reduction. It’s something that can be rolled out immediately, you can attach metrics to it, but now what?”
He explained overdose deaths are decreasing but the overdose calls themselves have not.
Wright also detailed the biggest crime hotspots in the city, listing Parkwood Place, UNHBC, 7 Eleven, and Pine Centre in the top 4.
As far as the Safe City Roads Program, 1156 tickets were issued, bringing in a total of $216,250 in ticket revenue.
Going into 2020, Wright noted crime reduction, community and road safety, and human resource management as the biggest pressures moving forward.
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