Penticton, B.C. is looking to give local bylaw officers the upper hand, by giving them additional authority to enforce bylaws and maintain safety in the city.
The concept isn’t new, but not typically seen in municipalities of this size.
The phones at the Penticton RCMP and bylaw office seem to always be ringing off the hook, as both squads deal with an extremely high number of requests for their services.
“The real intent of this bylaw is to free up time for the RCMP officers,” said Blake Laven, director of development services with the City of Penticton.
“When you look at what’s happening in Penticton and communities our size over the past five years is really unprecedented. Problems that were typically big city problems are starting to come to smaller communities.”
In 2022, bylaw in Penticton responded to over 7,000 calls for service and 3,500 of those calls were for “social nuisance in public places.”
Some of those calls can be completed by bylaw and community safety officers, however, others require RCMP assistance.
The new bylaws will allow officers to take the next step without a police presence.
“This will really give the community safety officers the lawful authority to attend inside those kind of privately-owned settings but with public access,” said bylaw services manager Tina Mercier.
“That way they’ll be able to respond, get the person maybe connected to services, get them moved along.”
One of the proposals is to designate bylaw and community safety officers as peace officers, giving them additional authority to enforce bylaws and providing them with legal protection against assaults.
The new bylaws also propose officers could use force when necessary.
“It is really there as a worse-case scenario that if they need to protect themselves. If they do have to use any defensive tools, they are trained and equipped to do that,” Mercier said.
City staff is also putting forward the Safe Public Places Bylaw to increase community safety. It will regulate and prohibit certain activities people can do in public places, including where and how people solicit and loiter.
This is similar to centres with higher populations in the province.
“Municipal authority that Vancouver and Kelowna have around panhandling, around expectations in public, drug use in public. They’re embedded in their bylaws already, we don’t have those same authorities,” said Laven.
Council is being asked to give first reading to the new bylaw on March 21, which will initiate a one-month engagement process and seek feedback from the community.