Socio-economic conditions may be contributing to the rise of violent crime in Salmon Arm.
Staff Sgt. Kevin Keane, in his second quarterly report for the year provided to city council Monday, noted that person crimes, including violent crime and assault are increasing.
“As in past quarters, we’re seeing an increase in violent crime, it just keeps on going up – not huge, but it’s just creeping up,” said Keane, noting violent crime includes disturbance issues where people are acting violently. “I described before that we’re dealing with intoxication issues a lot of the time, we’re dealing with persons that have low coping skills a lot of the time, and I’m just starting to consider whether the tightening economy plays a roll in that, when it comes down to family violence and these kind of things, because we’re seeing an increase in that as well.”
In terms of property crime, Keane said the detachment saw a blip in the first quarter of the year, which he linked to individuals who had done their time and had been released from jail. But he said this is being brought back under control and, overall, it continues to drop.
“Right now, as far as property crime goes, the big issue on our plate is that we’re dealing with organized crime groups that go outside the detachment area, throughout the Okanagan, reaching over to Alberta,” Keane added. “They’re hard to pin down when people don’t actually live in your area. And we’re trying to get a handle on that.”
Traffic-wise, there were 32 collisions in the city last quarter, with only five injuries amounting to no increase. Keane added that 68 people were removed from the road in relation to drinking and driving.
On the drug front, Keane spoke highly of the work being done by his plain-clothes officers, who are specifically targeting activity related to cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.
With the summer season, Keane says there has been an increase in calls for service – an estimated 45 per cent of the detachment’s calls occur during the 12 weeks of summer. For the second quarter, the detachment received 1,943 calls for service, completed 719 traffic stops, jailed 207 prisoners and has 215 ongoing investigations.
Coun. Alan Harrison offered his compliments for the RCMP’s effective work on the hard drug enforcement, and commented on the usefulness of the speed reader board. In addition, Harrison thanked Keane’s liaison officer, Cst. Kieran Bastiann, who was assigned to Bastion Elementary. Harrison said Bastiann established positive rapport with the students, though there was one incident where his influence wasn’t entirely appreciated.
“I had to break up a snowball fight that he started,” said Harrison, Bastion principal. “My secretary looked out the window and said, ‘Alan, there’s snowballs flying everywhere,’ and the fact was that most of them were coming out of his hand and not the kids’, and so they started to fire back. So, when I went out there, the kids were quick to say, ‘he started it.’ And he actually admitted it, he said ‘yes he did.’ So I explained to him the rule, and he’s been quite well-behaved since that time.”
On a more serious note, Harrison asked about the E Division deputy commissioner’s respectful workplace action plan, which is to be introduced to detachments. Keane said he didn’t know exactly what the plan is, but that he understands the issue is in the media.
“Several of the female constables that I’ve talked to have been upset about the media coverage and they think it’s overly harsh; however, the RCMP, as an organization, has come out there and said this conversation is over, whether or not it is a problem, it exists and this is what we are going to do,” said Keane.
He went onto explain that at the beginning of each year, the detachment undertakes quality assurance audits on different aspects of operations. This year it focused on a respectful workplace.
“We interviewed every member of the detachment… and we got feedback as far as any instance of harassment, and it was fine,” said Keane. “And then we backed it up by having every member review the harassment policy, so that we all understand…”
Harrison said he wasn’t implying there was any problem with the local detachment at all, and that the policy being given to the detachments looked positive.