At 47, Kelowna RCMP’s new Supt. Brent Mundle admits he looks older than his age. Maybe that’s because his career has been on fast forward as of late.
When he came to Kelowna two years ago, Mundle was promoted to inspector and then suddenly became Kelowna’s top cop a few months ago when his boss, Supt. Nick Romanchuk, announced he was stepping down.
Mundle, the son of a former policeman, said he dabbled in other careers before following in his father’s footsteps.
“I worked for an alarm company, worked for some retail stores, did some volunteer work,” he said.
Prior to Mundle’s promotion, morale was an issue at the detachment but Mundle said that’s turning around.
“We’ve had our ups and downs but generally, I think things are proceeding pretty well,” he said.
One of Mundle’s big moves will be just that — a move — into the RCMP’s brand new building.
“All of our employees are quite excited about the move. It will be in two months time. As you can see, this building was built in 1962 and my understanding is at that time, the population of the city was around 14,000. Now we’re at approximately 130,000 people,” he said.
And with any growing city comes big city problems like fentanyl. Mundle is hoping the fentanyl crisis has peaked and is on the downward trend.
“It’s very hard for me to speculate on that. I guess if I were to look back over history, I think we’ve seen a number of incidents over the years with drugs that have resulted in increases in overdoses. It seems to peak and goes onto a downward trend,” Mundle said.
On the issue of the legalization of marijuana, Mundle said it’s the status quo until the federal government says otherwise.
“The RCMP will enforce any laws as they get dictated by the federal government. We’re slowly moving forward, waiting to see what’s going to be in the future and what that landscape is going to look like.”
Legalization is expected to happen next year and Mundle is expected to be around when it does. Unlike his predecessor who was only the job for a few years, Mundle says he plans on being around for much longer than that.
“I’ve only got 24 years of service. I think I have a number of years to offer the organization and the community, so it would be my intent to stay here for a while,” he said.