After not adding to the number of police officers in the city for 10 years, Burnaby city council has recently approved funding for 20 extra Mounties in an effort to “catch up” to the needs of the detachment, according to Mayor Mike Hurley.
Shortly before the municipal election last October, council under former mayor Derek Corrigan announced it was adding eight more officers to the local force in 2018 and another six in 2019.
Last month, the new city council under Hurley approved the addition of six more.
With salary and benefits, each officer costs about $160,000 annually, for a total increase of $3.2 million annually.
When asked about the big jump, Hurley said the local detachment had become understaffed over the last decade.
“It’s like if a city has 10 years of zero-percent tax increases, then all of a sudden you’re going to find that big jump, and it looks awkward, but it’s really a catch-up,” he said.
Hurley said police numbers were low considering Burnaby’s population.
Chief Superintendent Deanne Burleigh said one of the first things she did when she took over as the detachment’s top cop in December 2017 was to go over the city’s crime stats.
While 10-year rates were trending down, she discovered some crimes have been on the rise in the last five years.
In 2013, for example, she said the city’s violent crime rate was down to seven violent offences per 1,000 people – by 2017, it had jumped to 14.
“I took a look at what’s going up,” Burleigh told the NOW, “and in our community violent crime’s going up, child-sex offences are going up, fraud’s going up, extortions, cybercrime, things like missing-person’s files, fatal collisions and all sorts of mental health-related files. These are all files that require extensive investigation.”
RCMP staffing became an election issue last year, with Hurley criticizing council for not adding to the detachment’s numbers since 2008.
When Burleigh, citing a lack of resources, pulled the plug on the RCMP’s bike squad program last May, Hurley used that as a further illustration the detachment had been neglected.
At the time, however, public safety director Dave Critchley said it was up to the officer in charge of the RCMP detachment to decide how to deploy its resources.
When asked at that time if the detachment was adequately resourced, he said that was part of ongoing discussions between the city and the detachment.
“It starts with the OIC (officer in charge), who presents to the city and then as a result of those discussions we enter it into our budget process, so I mean, the priorities shift all the time with the OIC,” he said in a May 2018 interview.
When asked last week whether the RCMP had made any requests for more officers between 2008 and 2018, he said that was a question for the RCMP and declined to comment further – despite having been the officer in charge of the detachment for five years between 2011 and 2016.
(Shortly after retiring in 2016, Critchley stepped into the newly minted role of public safety director, a reclassified deputy city manager position that brought five departments including police, fire, emergency management and bylaws together under the umbrella of public safety and community services.)
Burleigh, meanwhile, said she didn’t want to speculate on what had happened at the detachment when she wasn’t there.
She said she presented her information during a workshop with mayor and council last year and has been part of the budgeting process this year.
“They were receptive to the information and acted on it,” she said.
Four of the new officers will be used to enhance the school liaison program, according to a city report, and two will be used to bolster the recently resurrected RCMP bike squad.
