Powell River’s RCMP department is asking Powell River Regional District about any policing priorities the regional board has in rural areas.
Staff Sgt. Rod Wiebe appeared before the regional district’s committee of the whole mid-March to recap what has occurred in regional district areas in terms of policing during the past year.
“We take various crimes and use that as a gauge to see what is going on in the community and where we need to focus policing,” he said. Wiebe said the statistics he would be quoting were for incidents outside of the City of Powell River boundaries.
In terms of impaired driving cases, comparing 2013 to 2014, there was a 0.6 per cent increase and that mirrors what is happening in the city as well, Wiebe said.
“I’ve explained to other groups that originally ICBC introduced the immediate roadside prohibition program a few years ago,” he said. “That was to keep people out of the criminal courts. Now the program has run its course. People who have accessed that don’t get access to it again. Now we are seeing people that have to be directed to the criminal court. We attribute some of that increase as to why impaired driving is up in the [rural] area.”
Regarding reportable collisions, the RCMP uses this as a gauge as to where to allocate traffic resources. In the rural area, collisions are up 22 per cent. There were 41 in 2013 and it’s up to 50 this past year. That’s also on track with the trend in the city.
Break and enter statistics rose substantially by 71 per cent.
“There was a crime spree that happened north and south,” Wiebe said. “Those numbers went up from seven in 2013 to 12 in 2014. I can report that all the break and enters have been solved and those gentlemen are now in jail.
“With numbers so low it’s easy to see how the number spike sounds really bad but there were only 12 [break and enters] in the whole [rural] area. Those numbers are still very low for an area this size.”
Theft under $5,000 was one of the detachment’s strategic priorities and the hope was to reduce it by five per cent. In the rural areas it increased by four per cent, going up from 85 to 88. The city went down one per cent.
Drug offences dropped substantially from 107 to 72. There was also a drop in assaults.
“Violent crime was down 32 per cent, which is a number we were really happy with,” Wiebe said. “It went from 85 assaults in 2013 to 55 in 2014. Conversely, in the city, it went up 11 per cent so you are doing pretty good in the rural areas.”
Wiebe said the detachment is setting its strategic priorities for the coming year.
“As much as the major areas of road safety, crime reduction and youth aren’t going to change, the initiatives within there will change every year for us, to try and address some areas of concern that you may have, or areas where you think we are not responding to calls,” Wiebe said. “We have about 25 per cent of our time where we can do things proactively. We would like to have your input on what you would like to see in the upcoming year.”
