Dear Editor:
Re: Dow Avenue slum should not be replaced by highrise, resident says, Burnaby NOW online.
Janaya Fuller-Evan's interview with Donna Polos highlights an important theme not yet broached in the leadup to the civic election: policing and public safety.
Burnaby's current Burnaby Citizens Association monopoly council was quick to approve the building plans now sharply increasing town centre population density; slow to expand the police force protecting those town centres; and utterly incapable of understanding why such disjointed planning generates chronic police understaffing with each new building proposal like that on Dow Avenue.
This is simply wrong-headed, and it must be stopped.
Burnaby needs a proper plan for local policing that ties population growth and urbanization to police force size - regardless of whether the RCMP or another force delivers the service.
Electing Burnaby Municipal Green candidates to council is the first step toward that more comprehensive, coordinated and coherent planning for policing service that will reduce or even eliminate officer understaffing and fully protect a city with no less than four rapidly urbanizing town centres.
How bad is the current situation? Statistics Canada's Police Resources In Canada, 2010 (p. 16-18) provides hard evidence.
Burnaby, with 223,000 residents and a crime severity index (CSI) of 121.2, staffs 128 officers per 100,000 persons.
In Vancouver, just over Boundary Road (where the CSI is a comparable 119.8) there are 223 officers per 100,000 residents. That is 233/128 or fully 75 per cent more than in Burnaby. In Richmond, with 191,000 residents but a CSI of 84.1 (just 69 per cent of Burnaby's CSI of 121.2), the council still believes it necessary to staff 117 officers per 100,000 residents. That is 117/128 or 91 per cent of Burnaby's count.
Statistics from other Canadian cities of comparable population to Burnaby include: Halifax (222,800 residents, a CSI of 97.2, and 228 officers per 100,000); Windsor (222,251 residents, a CSI of 91.6, and 210 officers per 100,000); Saskatoon (223,200 residents, a CSI of 147.2, and 197 officers per 100,000); and Regina (193,300 people, a CSI of 151.1, and 193 officers per 100,000).
What do the mayors and councils of all of these Canadian cities know about policing and public safety that the local BCA do not? Perhaps some of the BCA candidates, starting with Derek Corrigan, can put these thoughts on paper for your readers before election day (Nov. 19).
G. Bruce Friesen, president, Burnaby Municipal Green Party
