A draft version of the BC Policing and Community Safety Plan is now available for public and stakeholder input. The Plan is the result of the engagement activities described throughout this blog. It was also influenced by broader global trends, drivers of change unique to this province and emerging complexities facing policing today.  The recommendations from the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry were also released during the development of this document and therefore influenced its direction significantly.  

While many policing reforms have been made during the past 15 years, policing in British Columbia must continue to evolve. The BC Policing and Community Safety Plan will guide that evolution over the next 3, 5 and 10 years.  The Plan outlines 16 action items, organized under five themes.

 From September to October 2012 a series of focus groups were held to build on the feedback obtained from the BC Policing Plan Roundtables. Eight focus groups in total convened with practitioners who have expertise and interest from across the province. Stakeholders included members from the RCMP, Municipal Police Departments, Municipalities, Provincial Government, Academia, Private Security, Public Safety, Interest Groups and First Nations representatives in the following areas:

• Community Engagement
• Continuum of Law Enforcement
• Crime Prevention and Public Safety
• Gangs and Guns
• Mental Health and Policing
• Multi-agency collaboration and coordination of services
• Performance Management of Policing
• Police Funding

The success of the focus groups have assisted us to identify a number of strategies for consideration as we move forward with the next stage of drafting the BC Policing Plan.

At the Union of B.C. Municipalities annual convention held in Victoria B.C. Policing Plan’s executive sponsors took the opportunity to reach out to local governments for further input as we move into drafting the plan. The roundtable process took us to nine different regional centres, and although local mayors or municipal staff participated in those events, UBCM offers a unique opportunity for local government representatives from around the province to discuss the more specific concerns they have in common when it comes to addressing their communities’ safety.

The session was led by Lynda Cavanaugh, the Assistant Deputy Minister of Community Safety and Crime Prevention, and Clayton Pecknold, the Assistant Deputy Minister of Policing and Security Programs and the provincial Director of Police Services. Langley Mayor Peter Fassbender, who also co-chairs the UBCM local government committee on the new RCMP contract and was the municipal representative in the negotiation of the new RCMP contract with the federal government, facilitated the discussion.

Between April and June 2012, we hosted a series of regional stakeholder roundtables throughout the province. After each one, we blogged about the event and posted a comprehensive report of all the feedback received. You can read the reports here.

We have now woven together the feedback from all nine roundtables into one report, available here. Overall, a key topic of discussion in many of the roundtable sessions was the desire of participants to see the provincial government provide stronger leadership, better coordination of services, and alignment of funding with key public safety priorities. These themes are highlighted in greater detail in the report.

Creating B.C.’s Policing Plan continues to be an exciting challenge as we tap into the innovation and expertise of British Columbians around the province and listen to all the ideas and suggestions about how to enhance the safety of our communities. We’re now moving into the drafting phase, taking all of the feedback we’ve gotten so far and starting to shape it into workable goals, targets and performance measures for police in our province. Starting today, we’re also launching a new way for you to participate in the plan: a public survey you can take here. The survey is anonymous and covers topics like personal experience with crime, perceptions of safety in your community and your satisfaction with policing. The survey is also being conducted by phone. You can also continue to share your input via e-mail at BCPolicingPlan@gov.bc.ca

In the fall, we’ll be web-posting a draft of the plan to this blog, so you’ll have yet another opportunity for input before the plan is implemented.

Crime prevention is based on the idea that there are social, economic, and health factors that contribute to offending. Crime prevention strategies are designed to enhance positive influences and minimize negative ones; for example, increasing connectivity and engagement within a community, strengthening family ties, and creating activities for youth.

Studies have shown that the cost of preventing crime is much lower than the cost of the Criminal Justice System response to crime, and it yields greater long-term benefits. And yet, as we heard at our Surrey roundtable, they can be a challenge to measure and we should not discount the need for communities to modify a model according to their needs and available resources.

In our regional roundtables so far, we often hear that police need to find new ways to connect with the public and be part of the community. There are formal activities that already go on, from annual strategic planning processes to regular reports to council, but these processes aren’t designed for building personal relationships between officers and the rest of their communities. At the same time, we know that officers are already spending many personal hours participating in their communities, like sporting events, youth activities and charity events, on top of the fast-paced demands of their work day conducting enforcement.

A number of participants have suggested that police explore the potential of social media to give residents an idea of their day to day activities, to spread awareness about real versus perceived public safety threats and to seek feedback or tips from the public. In fact, Minister of Justice and Attorney General just gave a speech about that very subject to an audience of police communicators from around North America at COPCOM 2012! Check out how Port Moody is using Twitter to report on their calls as they receive them. Ever stood on the street corner, craning your neck to figure out what police were up to as they responded to an incident? If you live in Victoria, you can often rely on the VicPD Twitter to get real-time updates on what’s happening. The Abbotsford Police Department combines community partnerships, like Project BandAid with a lively presence on Twitter so that whether you see them face to face or in your newsfeed, you can see the positive roles they play in preventing crime and being leaders in their community. VPD has grown their Twitter audience from just 20 people at the beginning of 2011 to over 17,000, using it to provide timely updates to the public and opportunities to speak directly to Chief Chu. For example, during the Celebration of Lights last summer, they supplemented their physical presence with Twitter updates, providing immediate news about road closures, trouble spots and transit.

Our last regional roundtable was held in Fort St. John where we met with an elder from the Doig River First Nation, city councillors, victim services and violence against women programs, a drug awareness program, RCMP, and a local restorative justice coordinator to talk about how the B.C. Policing Plan should incorporate the criminal activity and crime prevention needs in their region. It’s safe to say that in some respects the Northeast is worlds apart from other regions of the Province, with very unique economic drivers and social dynamics. And yet, when we talked about its future, it became clear that sustainable community growth is a future trend and priority the Northeast shares with other northern destinations like Prince Rupert and Terrace.

We started the day with an open discussion about crime-related issues and how they are affecting the community. We heard that the Northeast continues to be a place of significant employment opportunities, especially for young people, thanks to the oil and gas industry. The average age in Fort St. John is about 29 years old and those who work in industry camps earn up to $5,000 per week.  Although camps are dry, and oil and gas companies have invested in keeping their workplaces that way, participants said illicit drug demand in the community remains high. The sexual exploitation of young women remains a real concern for those we spoke to. All of these issues our participants identified as connected to gangs and organized crime. Domestic violence in the region has also created a significant demand for support services. Providers struggle to combat these problems amid the criminal industries that continue to survive.

The next stop in our regional roundtables was Cranbrook, where we met with police, local government staff, mayors, community agencies, victim service providers and others who are active in their Kootenay communities. At this roundtable we added a visual element to the morning’s discussions by asking participants to write down community challenges and proposed solutions on cards that were then categorized and posted around the room. Everyone could get a sense of the different opinions in the room while engaging in discussion with each other. It also gave a snapshot of the indisputable issues so we could focus ourselves on trying to come up with innovative new ideas to address them.

Whether talking about core police responsibilities or crime prevention resources, discussion often came back to the need to integrate the delivery of support services, particularly mental health and substance abuse recovery.  Some participants suggested police-community partnerships in crisis response, like the Car 87 program in Vancouver, to create a safe and effective means of de-escalation. We were also told that policing is an expensive way of responding to mental health calls and is not sustainable. Even setting aside the cost of these types of models, many who work in rural community policing also talked about owning their files from start to finish. Models that work in larger urban centres are not always suitable for rural detachment policing where staffing levels and the agencies police work with differ. What do you think?

We had a great turn out on June 1 in Prince Rupert with people coming from as far away as Houston and Lake Babine Nation near Burns Lake. This roundtable was the seventh in our series of café-style conversations with regional community leaders and agencies about public safety, crime prevention, core police responsibilities and how to respond to criminal activity in our communities.

Participants raised many common themes that we’ve heard in communities all over B.C. and they also highlighted ones that are unique to the North Coast that reflected the challenges of having numerous communities that are both small and remote. Most agreed that police are asked to do too much in their communities. One participant described police as the go-to resource because there are limited social services to address the root causes of crime. Suggestions included setting clear priorities and expectations for police, as was done successfully in Houston, so police are not asked to do everything, but can do what they are mandated to do well. At the same time, communities need to support their police, and resources need to be found so police are not taking the place of social workers or counselors in the area.

At our sixth regional roundtable the discussions were energetic, frank, and solutions-oriented.  Differences of opinion were met with diplomacy and respectfulness and those differences didn’t get in the way of collaborating on suggestions for the B.C. Policing Plan.  Participants provided a lot of suggestions for how to prevent and intervene in criminal activity and how to create sustainable goals for policing in the B.C. Policing Plan. Plus, check out the variety of pipe cleaner sculptures they made throughout the day! It gives new meaning to the term “busy hands make light work.”

The significance of volunteerism was raised again – not just as a way of helping officers build relationships in their communities, but as a way of creating communication links so that information circulates in the community better. We had in-depth discussions about the increasing complexity of police work, reminiscent of the comments in Vancouver about police’s extensive training and education. We’ve had comments on the blog about the potential for some current policing responsibilities to be spread to other roles, and in Surrey we talked about civilianization and the use of crime analysts. We heard that the bait car program, the red light intersection safety cameras are working well as strategic measures that maximize available officer time. When we asked about how to add more value, one participant jokingly referred to policing as a bit of a black box – money goes in, work is done, and what outcomes can be attributed back to that work? How do we know the great work police are doing and how can we help them do it more effectively? Some thought that if we could separate certain responsibilities that could be done through tiered policing, that might be a start. We got a very similar comment here on the blog just a few days ago and we’d love to hear what you think of these suggestions.