RCMP Watch

Phil Melnychuk, Maple Ridge News

While Lower Mainland RCMP stations struggle to stay fully staffed, competition from their higher paying rivals such as TransLink police isn’t making the task any easier.However, there are many employment opportunities for retired officers, RCMP Insp. Denis Boucher told Maple Ridge council Monday.

Boucher, corporate and client services officer with the RCMP Lower Mainland District, and Phyllis Carlyle, an administrator from the City of Richmond, were part of a working group of RCMP and municipalities that have addressed police labour shortages.

Several measures have been taken to maintain staff levels in the Lower Mainland, where housing prices discourage members from smaller towns and rural areas from relocating.

One is to allow new RCMP officers to serve at detachments in their home base when they graduate from RCMP depot in Regina.

Boucher said that prevents needless transfers as officers try to get back to their home towns once they start serving. It also helps deal with the escalating cost of housing, if officers can return to their homes where friends and relatives can help out.

Boucher said RCMP administration is also looking at a Lower Mainland housing allowance for officers, an idea that was considered, then abandoned about five years ago.

Using auxiliary officers, drawn from the ranks of retired police who live in the area, have worked well in Kelowna, but that hasn’t been such a success in the Lower Mainland.

Community service officers, somewhere between a regular policeman and a bylaw officer, could also help.

Those officers would be cheaper and could be hired by either the municipality or the RCMP. But details still have to be worked out, Boucher said. “They don’t necessarily replace a gun-toting member.”

Surrey and Langley have been chosen for the pilot program which is soon to unfold.

The group also is considering setting up a pool of officers from which police would be sent to different detachments to fill in whenever necessary.

Using civilians to do some police roles is also being considered wherever possible.

While TransLink police earn more money as rookie officers compared to their RCMP counterparts, the transit authority in the past year has hired only about three former Lower Mainland RCMP officers and none from Maple Ridge, said Sgt. Willie Merenick, with TransLink police.

Before the service was a full-fledged police force, it relied heavily on retired officers from other departments, but now it’s building a younger force through its recruitment program through the Justice Institute of B.C., he said.

Eventually, TransLink police could number more than 200 officers, if the Evergreen light rail transit line in Coquitlam is built.

TransLink pays about another $1,000 more per month than the RCMP for new officers, with beginning TransLink cops taking home about $60,000 annually.

Coun. Al Hogarth said the RCMP is doing a better job than municipal police forces. “Every time I turn around there seems to be some improvement,” he said.

“What we’ve got going here is pretty good.”