A report commissioned by a senior City of Kelowna staffer has revealed the RCMP detachment in the Central Okanagan city is seriously understaffed.
“When we took a look at Kelowna in terms of the demands that are being made on the police service and what’s going on in the larger community, we found that this is a high demand environment,” said Curt Griffiths, a Simon Fraser University criminologist and report co-author.
The 32-page shortened version of the 300-page report was submitted to city council Monday afternoon.
It states that the detachment does not have sufficient resources in a number of key areas and that this has a significant impact on the detachment’s ability to ensure the safety and security of the community.
The report also states the lack of resources places sworn members and civilian personnel at risk related to mental health and operational fatigue and burnout.
“We found that the detachment in this case is doing the best that it can with what it’s got and that was an important finding and also that they are understaffed and that understaffing has ramifications all across the detachment and into the community,” Griffiths told Global News.
Those ramifications include criminal cases not being investigated.
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“These are serious cases,” Griffiths said.
“These aren’t minor thefts or minor B and E’s, these are assaults, these are assaults causing injury, these are child abuse cases, domestic violence cases and the officers, they’re not not addressing them because they don’t want to, they just don’t have the time.”
The report suggested the detachment’s already overwhelming workload is exasperated by the additional two million tourists that descend on the city every summer as well as the drug and homelessness crisis.
It makes a number of recommendations including the hiring of 56 additional police officers and 28 civilian staff by 2025.
The troubling report comes amid major controversy over the number of sexual assault cases that were dismissed in Kelowna last year.
According to Statistics Canada, 40 per cent of sexual assault cases were deemed unfounded in 2018, three times the provincial average.
While council received the report and followed up with a discussion, a strategy on how to proceed moving forward will be created in 2020.
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