RCMP are frustrated, too

BY PIETA WOOLLEY

At the RCMP Detachment on Barnet Street, the phones ring all day and night. Police officers get an average of 18 calls a day asking for service – many of them reporting new Criminal Code violations that they want addressed.

In qathet in 2021, there were 1,655 crimes reported. Many categories of crime are up over 50% in four years. They include assaults, break and enters, criminal harassment, possession of stolen property – crimes that appear in Isabelle Southcott’s main story.

“Most of those are committed by a small number of prolific offenders,” said Powell River RCMP Staff Sergeant Rod Wiebe. “At any given time, there’s about six chronic offenders here.”

Sometimes those prolific offenders are in jail or in remand awaiting their trial (though that is becoming less common) – so they’re not active. Often, though, they are accumulating rap sheets of up to 30 charges before they see a judge.

Rod says his force is frustrated with how difficult it is to get charges to stick, after an arrest is made. In part, that’s because of 2019’s Bill C-57 – the “catch and release” legislation passed federally, which aims to reduce punishing marginalized groups. In practical terms, Rod explained, the bill means some people can steal or destroy other people’s things over and over again, without facing serious legal consequences.

Officers are also frustrated, he said, with how much pressure is put on the force to deal with incidents that are not crimes.

“We get a lot of mental health calls,” he said. Many of them come from businesses, some from the hospital. Other agencies are better equipped to handle them, he said – though everyone is short staffed and RCMP are available 24/7 so they become the default agency.

Rod pointed out that the vast, vast majority of locals who live in poverty, who have addictions, and who struggle with mental health challenges, are not chronic offenders. Most of qathet’s marginalized folks do not engage in crime at all, though they, are often targets of theft and violence.

“Everyone has the right to feel secure in their community,” Rod said. “We’re tired of treading water. Something needs to change.”

(In November’s crime story about corrections and courts, we’ll dive deeper into why so many arrests result in so little justice.)