Kidnapping depletes Port Moody’s police major incident reserve fund with $339K-bill

A single kidnapping in Port Moody has depleted the major incident reserve fund of the Port Moody Police Department, leaving the municipality with a bill more than $400,000 over its budget.

At a June 20 finance committee meeting, the City of Port Moody revealed the April 19 incident required the police force to drain the remaining $339,00 of its reserve to pay for the “technical expertise” and “human resourcing required to hand a file of this magnitude.” The victim, a Port Moody resident, was safely rescued.

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More than 100 police officers, including members of the Vancouver Police Department and RCMP, responded to the high-profile incident. Five people were charged with snatching the man from the street and holding him hostage for a number of days.

The Port Moody Police Department has inquired with the B.C. government to determine whether it may be able to recover some of the costs, given that the police operation also involved crime scenes in Mission and Maple Ridge. At the meeting, however, Chief Const. David Fleugel said the prospects “are not looking very good for us.”

Coun. Callan Morrison said the kidnapping represents 0.7 per cent of the municipality’s overall budget.

“As the region has noticed an increase in crimes, murders, etcetera — especially in Surrey and other cities — I’m just worried about possible future expenses, and how those would be covered,” Morrison said last week.

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On April 19, the victim was reportedly taken off of a busy Port Moody street in broad daylight.

Witnesses told Global News at the time he was grabbed as he came out of Innovative Fitness on Murray Street in the busy “Brewers Row” neighbourhood. They described the victim’s feet hanging out of the open door of a van as he was punched by two masked suspects.

One witness said they tried to pull the victim from the van, to no avail, while another described trying to block the suspects’ vehicle with their own, resulting in the kidnappers driving over a grassy boulevard to escape.

Multiple police agencies made several arrests three days later, with operations carried out in Mission and Maple Ridge. Five people were charged with kidnapping, forcible confinement and conspiracy to commit an offence, although a motive was not clear at the time.

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The finance committee agenda from June 20 states that “consulting and profession” fees are expected to be $408,000 over budget, with a new operating budget deficit of $127,106 for the Port Moody Police Department.

In an emailed statement, Const. Zam Zacharias of the Port Moody police described the kidnapping as a “budget driver” whose investigation is ongoing. He could not provide an update on progress to the case.

Kash Heed, a former solicitor general for B.C., said he was unsurprised the kidnapping was so costly given the limitations of a police force as small as Port Moody’s. It’s an example of why a single regional police service “makes total sense” as opposed to multiple municipal forces in B.C., he added.

“This is a multi-jurisdictional type of investigation,” he explained. “It is very costly for these types of independent municipal police agencies, given the fact that there is no availability to have economies of scale because of the size of their department, and the fact that they are relatively safer communities than some of the others.

“So if you had a unified police service, one that covers the entire Metro region, one that looks after the crime regardless, one that you can hold to account to deal with it, it certainly makes total sense.”

Heed is also a former Vancouver police officer, and said discussion about creating a regional police force has been underway for decades.

In April, an all-party committee of B.C. MLAs charged with examining policing in B.C. recommended the province rid itself of the RCMP and create a single provincial police service instead. 

— with files from Simon Little and Catherine Urquhart