Instead of sending an officer to your door, if the situation is relatively minor, Victoria police could ask you to make a report online or by talking to an officer on the phone. More special constables could be deployed for certain duties.
And instead of typing out crime reports, officers could dictate, using voice-recognition technology.
Those are some of the measures the Victoria Police Department is looking at as it struggles to deal with a rising workload.
With both Victoria and Esquimalt councillors reluctant to raise taxes to hire more police officers, Acting Police Chief Del Manak said the department has to make changes.
Manak said there are officers on light duties, either because they are injured or awaiting surgery, who can take less serious police reports over the phone instead of in person. “Do we need to continue, in the old-fashioned way, to send a police officer in a car to every call?” Manak asked.
A consulting firm has been hired to suggest different approaches to policing.
Legal requirements for documenting investigations and the cost of using modern technology in investigations have made policing more time-consuming and complex and driven up costs. In addition, calls about everything from lost children to public inebriation have risen as Victoria’s downtown residential population has grown.
Between 2012 and 2016, Victoria police reported a 12 per cent increase in calls for service and a 16 per cent increase in dispatched calls for service, which means a call that results in an officer being sent to the scene.
While crime rates across B.C., including Victoria, have been going down over the past decade, Victoria police say most of their calls are related to social, not criminal matters, such as public intoxication, noise complaints and mental-health issues. Crime rates have edged up in Victoria in recent years, by 10.5 per cent in 2014 and 8.8 per cent in 2015.
Manak said the department will work with the police union to see where special constables, who would be paid less than sworn officers, could be used more broadly, such as in traffic control.
He said he’s also in talks with Saanich police about developing an integrated intelligence unit to better share crime data and child-exploitation investigations.
Victoria police have not made changes yet, but the status quo is not sustainable as people are waiting too long for a response to less serious calls and officers don’t have enough time for proactive policing, Manak said. “It’s like playing a game of whack-a-mole. I move resources from here to there and then that area flares up.”
Esquimalt Coun. Susan Low said she’s happy to see the department thinking about better use of resources. “It’s cool to see our department thinking of using technology in an efficient way to reach out,” Low said. “I think we have to have a bit of faith that the Victoria police won’t become a virtual police force.”
The Township of Esquimalt has called for a more visible presence and community approach since it renegotiated its policing contract with Victoria police in 2014.
Low said community liaison officers have been visible and a recent survey showed the majority of Esquimalt residents who responded were satisfied with the department.
“I think there’s an opportunity for VicPD to lead and innovate here,” said Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, co-chairwoman of the police board.
Of the 700 Victoria and Esquimalt residents who responded to a recent police department survey, a majority said their top concerns are drug activity and homelessness.
Jane Butler-McGregor, CEO of the Victoria Conservatory of Music, told a council meeting on Tuesday that residents and business owners around the 900 block of Pandora Avenue, where the conservatory is located, have ongoing concerns about drug activity.
“Currently, from our observation, there is not sufficient police resources in this community for them to respond to the level and depth of activity that exists there.”
However, Victoria Coun. Ben Isitt, who maintains the city is over-policed, said there are many outreach workers dealing with vulnerable people downtown who were not given the chance to weigh in on the discussion.
