Kelowna Mounties ready for summer crime uptick: Superintendent

Kelowna’s top cop said her detachment is ready for the annual uptick in summer crime, despite recent reports that the local detachment is overworked and understaffed.

“As we go into this summer, it is not without challenges, and those challenges are not unique to Kelowna, the province, or nationally. In fact, it’s not unique to law enforcement. We know that the workforce everywhere is under strain,” Supt. Kara Triance told Kelowna city council on Monday as part of her quarterly report.

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“Following the pandemic and the societal shifts, it’s been becoming harder and harder to recruit law enforcement.”

Recruitment to the detachment, however, is a high priority given that it’s been operating with a 20 per cent staff vacancy rate in recent days.

The effects of that shortfall were laid out in an RCMP email obtained by Postmedia, and shared last month with Global News.

An officer said he and his peers are “extremely tired, and burnt out” from lack of staff, and that promises of support for officers are “nothing more than lip service.”

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Triance told council on Monday there are programs being instituted to address police mental health concerns but when it comes to staffing, she’s ready for the months ahead.

“One of the pieces that came forward this spring was an issue around resourcing and whether or not we were going to be in a position this summer to respond to some of the challenges that we anticipated,” she said.

To mitigate those concerns, Triance said the mounties held some internal strategy meetings with officers from around the province and made plans for long weekends, as well as some times when they know they’re going to experience higher than usual calls for service.

Long-term staffing plans were also addressed and Triance said there was significant interest in transfers from other parts of the province to Kelowna.

“While we won’t see the resources in place until the fall, we do anticipate a significant surge in incoming transfers, which I am quite pleased for,” Triance said.

Triance also addressed concerns that the RCMP would no longer have drug investigations, as attempts to address those staffing issues prompted a shifting of the detachment labour pool.

“This is not factual. And I really want to speak to that right now, to highlight the fact that we have significantly skilled and trained officers in our detachment doing important drug work every day,” she said.

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With that in mind,  Kelowna RCMP will see the uniform gang task force join them in town for quite a few weekends this summer.

“You will see our target team and our serious crimes team working on organized crime and drug offences throughout the summer,” she said.

Triance also pointed out there have been decisions federally that have changed the way police work is done and that officers try to apply that modernized approach to policing whenever possible and that includes drug work, the response to those in crisis and drug and weapons crimes.

Drugs and removing the sale of drugs to those who are dependent upon them for their life is not the focus, she said.