RCMP Watch

Neal Hall, CanWest News Service; Vancouver Sun - 12 June 2006

VANCOUVER - B.C. has not had enough RCMP officers to investigate some of the province’s most serious crimes for at least a decade, says a confidential 2005 provincial government document.

”There are insufficient resources to address the many serious crime investigations, including homicides, abductions and high-level organized crime,” says the briefing note, prepared by the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General.

The document was obtained by the Vancouver Sun through freedom of information legislation.

”There have been no substantive increases to the authorized strength of the RCMP provincial force or First Nations policing since the mid-1990s,” the document says.

The briefing note, dated May 11, 2005, was prepared more than three months after Premier Gordon Campbell announced the province would add 215 RCMP officers in communities as part of a crime-fighting strategy that is investing $122 million in policing, corrections and courts over the next three years.

But despite that infusion of cash and an aggressive recruiting campaign that will see up to 1,700 new RCMP officers added across Canada this year, B.C. remains nearly 400 officers short of being fully staffed. The gap continues to grow because of retirements, attrition and other factors.

In 2004, the force had 5,086 RCMP members in B.C. Today, there are 5,426 regular members in the province, well below the 5,804 positions for which there is funding.

In January 2005, Premier Gordon Campbell said: ”Police and law enforcement personnel across B.C. do the best they can every day to fight crime and keep us safe. But more resources are needed, and today we are responding.”

The premier didn’t mention the issue raised in the briefing note insufficient resources to address many serious crime investigations.

The federal Conservative government also pledged in its recent budget to spend $37 million to expand the RCMP training depot in Regina, and $161 million for more police officers and federal prosecutors.

But the RCMP now faces the problem of finding enough recruits to fill the new positions.

Vancouver RCMP Cpl. Tom Seaman said the force has already received the new provincial government funding to hire more officers to fill what has been called the ”capacity gap” to deal with unfilled vacancies and increasing demand to shift investigators to such specialized units as the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT).

Asked if the RCMP is concerned about the increased shortfall between funded positions and actual RCMP members, Seaman said: ”It’s a short-term problem that is in the process of being addressed by aggressive recruiting.”

Does the shortfall mean some crime will not get attention until the current backlog of positions is filled?

”We prioritize all our investigations,” said Seaman, adding the top priorities are homicides, abductions, armed robberies, home invasions, sexual predators, child pornography and exploitation of children on the Internet.

”Some of our long-term projects may be put on the back burner,” he said, but the RCMP will continue to investigate organized crime.

Earlier this month, however, RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli told a Senate committee on national security and defence that the Mounties are only able to tackle about one-third of known organized-crime cases because of limited resources.

Kevin Begg, assistant deputy minister of B.C.’s Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, said last Wednesday the province has provided $57 million in new funding to create 400 new positions since January of last year, including $30 million for the 215 new RCMP positions, $10 million for 76 positions in the new integrated Indo-Canadian crime unit, plus another $17 million for 110 positions in the integrated traffic safety unit.

”So there’s a significant investment in policing in this province,” Begg said. ”We wanted to build our infrastructure to take on more serious crime. I think we’re in a far better position today than we were a year ago or two years ago.”

Begg pointed out the RCMP shortfall numbers are misleading, because a vacancy can exist even though the position is filled by a municipal officer who has been seconded to an integrated joint-forces unit that includes both RCMP and municipal police.

He said the current shortfall in RCMP officers was expected and is a short-term problem that will be solved by new recruits filling vacancies. Also, a certain number of RCMP positions are unfilled because of vacations, maternity leave and sick leave.

Begg also said the province only funds 2,025 RCMP officers known as provincial contract officers who work in rural detachments in unorganized communities or towns with populations of 5,000 or fewer residents. The actual number of those positions filled is 1,904, a shortfall of 121, he said.

The other 2,779 RCMP officers in B.C. work for municipal police forces such as Langley and Surrey, which are not under provincial jurisdiction, Begg said.

”So the overall rate of vacancies is not out of proportion,” he said.

Last year, a study by researchers at the University College of the Fraser Valley and Simon Fraser University suggested that shortage of officers is having a direct impact on the ability of police to do their job with criminals in B.C. far more likely to get away with their crimes now than they were in the past.

According to the study, which was paid for by the RCMP, the number of police officers in B.C. has kept pace with population growth over the past 40 years but the number of reported crimes increased seven-fold during the same period, largely due to a dramatic increase in property crime.

nhall@png.canwest.com

Vancouver Sun

FACTBOX:

British Columbia announced Jan. 24, 2005 that it would spend $30 million last year to fund more an additional 215 Mounties, including:

-89 new officers for serious and major crime units such as specialized surveillance units, the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System that detects serial criminals, commercial crime, sexual predator crime, hate crime and homicide.

- 80 more officers for rural communities across B.C. and general policing duties.

-32 more officers for First Nations policing.

-14 new officers for the cyber crime unit, which investigates Internet child porn and sexual exploitation of children using computers linked to the web.

This fiscal year, the B.C. government plans to spend another $32 million for police and corrections, plus $10 million for courts.

During the 2007-08 fiscal year, the province will spend $34 million in additional funding for police and corrections, plus $11 million for courts.

nhall@png.canwest.com

Vancouver Sun