Prince George RCMP Superintendent Shaun Wright gave the detachment’s Year in Review presentation at tonight’s (Monday) City Council meeting, along with some eye opening facts.
Wright said that based on the number of criminal code cases across all of BC, Prince George has the 3rd highest volume.
“First is Vancouver, at 49,000. Surrey is number two at 39, almost 40,000. Not surprising, the two largest municipalities. And then, you know what surprised me a little bit? Prince George is number three by pure volume.”
This, along with some other statistics that showed PG has a high crime rate brought up some discussion about why this is happening, and what can be done.
Wright said they’ve dispensed naloxone to residents in the past few years, but have been keeping track of the number since 2018:
- 2018 saw 12 uses of naloxone
- 2019 saw 7 uses of naloxone
- 2020 saw that number jump to 36
- 2021 saw it rise even more to 52
Wright noted that this is one of the things that is drawing police away from their core function.
“I don’t want to get into specifics in this form about many agencies, but we’ve taken on responsibilities over time that really aren’t policing responsibilities.”
Wright said there are some tasks he felt should be taken over by Northern Health, the Ministry of Children and Family, as well as Parole Canada, and they’re looking to find ways to give those tasks back to those organizations.
“We don’t have time to be doing other people’s work, we rarely have time to do our own work,” added Wright.
Councillor Cori Ramsay wanted to know why we would have such a high crime rate among other municipalities.
“I imagine that’s probably a hard question to answer, but even just a best guess?”
Wright said that it was a very complex question.
“Every town that’s kind of been a resource town, a mill town, that sort of thing, has typically been, for lack of a better term blue collar, rough and tumble, a little rough around the edges, and is always typically has higher crime rates.”
He noted that the root causes of these issues probably aren’t in the scope of his own, or any of the City Councillors’ knowledge, but welcomed an academic study looking into the issue.
“At what point is it going to get to where people decide that they don’t want to live in Prince George anymore, that’s a concern that I have,” said Ramsay.
Councillor Terri McConnachie noted that Prince George only has so many tools to deal with these issues.
“Policing obviously doesn’t cause crime, but it can’t fix crime either. And the only tools that we have are the RCMP and our Bylaws. That’s what we have in our tool kit as a municipality.”
McConnachie said that she doesn’t believe that things like the work with BC Housing will fix crime either, and that she still expects encampments once the weather improves.
Councillor Kyle Sampson said that we are expecting police officers to be able to take on every situation, and noted that just isn’t a reasonable expectation.
“We’re really reliant on one group, your group, to do a lot of the heavy lifting, and that’s not fair. We got to continue to work with our other agencies in town, including Northern Health, and including some of these non profit organizations, and non government organizations to really step up their mandate.”
He also took the opportunity to send a message to anyone who commits a crime in the city.
“I think crime is crime, and I’m really sick of these losers causing crime in our community, and that’s what they are. They’re a bunch of losers, and they don’t deserve to have any empathy or sympathy given towards them. I hope that we can push the full force of the law on each and every one who commits a crime in Prince George and make them feel as unwelcome as possible,” added Sampson.
Wright said they have a new crime analyst who will be looking at a deeper analysis over the next couple years to give a better idea of where crime is happening, and how to better prevent it.
A report to council will be coming later in the year to determine if overtime hours spent by officers in Prince George would be better spent on getting more officers.
City Council also discussed supporting the Sexual Assault Centre’s application for a Northern Development Initiative Trust fund to bring in more workers, and talked about the 2022 Canadian Native Fastball Championships arriving at the end of July.
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