A shocking daylight murder near UBC Monday that may have spread across at least two Metro Vancouver municipalities is renewing debate about a regional police force.
United Nations gang associate Vishal Walia, 38, was gunned down outside the University Golf Club. The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team is leading the case, but still can’t say if the slaying is linked to a vehicle torched nearby, or if a crash and arrests on Highway 91 in Richmond are connected.
The incident is a potential example of what some critics say is a fragmented policing system in the Lower Mainland with gaps in information sharing.
And it comes with the future of policing in the region in question, as Surrey works through a costly back-and-forth on whether to drop the RCMP and replace it with its own municipal force.
“Multiple policing agencies really are a weakness in our system,” said Wally Oppal, former B.C. attorney general and the retired judge who led B.C.’s Missing Women Commission of Inquiry.
“There are too many police forces and we found that out in spades when we did the Pickton inquiry. It was a classic example for a call and benefit for regional policing.”
In that case, notorious serial killer Robert ‘Willy’ Pickton picked up women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and took them to his farm in Port Coquitlam to be killed.
Oppal said a failure to share information between the RCMP in Port Coquitlam and the Vancouver police allowed Pickton to prey on his victims undetected.
“Which resulted in Pickton being on the loose for another five years, and more homicides were committed during that time,” he said.
In April, an all-party committee of MLAs tasked with reviewing B.C.’s Police Act recommended the province end its contract with the RCMP, currently slated to run to 2032, and create a new provincial police force.
That same report recommended amalgamating police services on a regional basis where there are opportunities ot address fragmentation and improve efficiency.
The province is currently policed by a dozen municipal departments and more than 100 RCMP detachments.
The shift, according to the report, would “improve local accountability and decision-making” and “improve consistency of services, training, oversight and standards.”
Alberta is currently mulling its own move to a provincial police force. An independent report commissioned by the Alberta government found the shift would come with about $366 million in start-up costs, and that running the provincial force would cost about $400 million more per year than the current deal with the RCMP.
Public Safety Minister and Solicitor General Mike Farnworth splashed cold water on the idea of a regional force Tuesday.
“moving to a regional police force is not something that is on the government’s agenda,” he told Global News.
“I want to work with local governments to make sure we are able to, if there are gaps in terms of jurisdiction issues, that we are able to resolve them.”
Farnworth pointed to existing integrated units, such as IHIT or the gang-focused Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit (CFSEU).
And he said the province was looking at other revisions to the police act, and initiatives such as the establishment of B.C.’s own forensic firearms lab