Penticton city council unanimously agrees to hire 2 more RCMP officers

With the mayor calling it an emergency situation, the City of Penticton will be hiring two new police officers to help battle crime in the South Okanagan community.

With mayor John Vassilaki spearheading the charge to hire more cops, city council backed him, voting unanimously during a special meeting on Thursday afternoon.

However, the hiring of two officers only came after an earlier motion by Vassilaki to hire five officers was defeated 4-3.

Voting to hire five officers were Vassilaki plus councillors Frank Regehr and Judy Sentes. Councillors Julius Bloomfield, Katie Robinson, Campbell Watt and James Miller voted no.

Then came an amendment in which opposing council members said they’d be good with hiring two more RCMP members, with a report needed to figure out how many more, if any, officers need to be hired.

“I think we’ve agreed today that we are in desperate times to get this done,” said councillor Watt.

“I think we have collectively suggested that the best way to do that is to get as much information as possible, and then use that information and to do the right thing for our community.”

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During deliberations, the costs of hiring five officers, plus 2.5 civilian officers to back them, was pegged at $1.2 million — an amount some councillors found hard to financially swallow.

Council also noted that the city recently gave the green light to hire two more RCMP officers, but has yet to see them.

Penticton RCMP Supt. Brian Hunter said the hiring is urgent, saying officer caseloads are quite high, almost 2.5 times the provincial average.

During the early stages of deliberations, Robinson said she “wholeheartedly agrees” there’s a need for more officers.

However, she said the problem is that council needs to look at this with “a holistic view” with the budget in front of them.

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Robinson also opined that, “The missing piece of the puzzle in all of this is the failure of our judicial system to keep prolific offenders in jail. We have to stop the revolving door that is currently the practice that dumps these criminals back out on our streets without not even a slap on the hand.”

She continued, saying, “Until we fix that piece of the problem, you can hire all the RCMP in the world and we’re never going to solve the problem.”

Vassilaki ended the council portion of the meeting by saying “two officers is better than none at all,” adding, “I think we made a mistake, but that’s just my opinion.”