Hope still flickers in the minds of people who look at Greater Victoria’s policing structure and ponder what might happen if there was an outbreak of common sense. There’s a lot working against that dream.
Colleague Jack Knox conceded yesterday that merging the various departments is almost impossible, while describing the pale imitation that’s developing in the form of some new joint governance of the integrated regional police units.
People have come to accept that five separate municipalities with four separate police departments and three RCMP detachments serving eight more municipalities under various contracts is just the way it is.
The optimism created when Saanich and Victoria residents voted to create a citizens’ assembly to study amalgamation is sputtering now. It stalled during the pandemic and is now hung up on the issue of whether the B.C. government will chip in funding. The start of the municipal election season could further delay it.
But things can change. The Berlin Wall came down overnight. That flicker of hope is coming from a small niche in the legislature. There is a chance to make progress, or at least design the possibility of an opportunity to make progress. It’s in the workings of a committee of MLAs charged with recommending how to reform B.C.’s Police Act.
It got some attention when it was created two years ago because it was ordered to look at two sensitive high-profile issues: systemic racism in police departments, and police involvement in mental-health and addiction calls.
Another, quieter item on the to-do list was to look at governance structure and service delivery. That’s where the Victoria Police Department came in.
Chief Del Manak submitted a VicPD brief recommending that “B.C. take a leadership role in the structure of policing services” and consider leading regionalization where warranted.
“Leading,” in this context, means “forcing.”
“We believe that policing and the public in Greater Victoria would benefit from a single, regional police service,” said the submission, filed last spring.
“The policing structure in Greater Victoria is inefficient and unfair. VicPD receives constant criticism related to costs of policing when the reality is that a small tax base supports policing related to the bulk of the region’s serious crime, and high call volumes.”
It’s not just the concentration of serious crime. VicPD also has to cover the cost of policing demonstrations and protests.
“Budgeting for the ever-increasing frequency is speculative at best. The public that attend the events come from all over the province, but only our funding municipalities bear the brunt of costs for security.”
The brief was reinforced by a separate submission from the co-chairs of the Victoria-Esquimalt Police Board, mayors Lisa Helps and Barb Desjardins.
The neighbouring local governments are the only two in B.C. that have managed a police merger, after the B.C. government forced it in 2003. That merger was described as a “first step,” but no other steps were taken.
The mayors urged the province to “take the leadership required to bring all of the other police departments in the region into an amalgamated police service.”
There is talk that MLAs took on this job determined to be “bold” in recommending reforms. If they wanted to show boldness on a practical front, this is their chance. Victoria-Beacon Hill NDP MLA Grace Lore and Saanich North and the Islands Green MLA Adam Olsen are the only local members of the committee, which is chaired by Nanaimo-North Cowichan NDP MLA Doug Routley. The committee is due to report in late April.
The forces of inertia are strong. There’s a wall of opposition and indifference in Saanich to the idea, based on fears that patrol officers would migrate downtown. Suspicions that Victoria would come out ahead abound. The same prevails in Oak Bay. So advancing the idea would involve creating more arguments than can be listed here.
But the capital region is one entity and the city of Victoria is its heart. The downtown is doing its best to build back, but there’s a corrosive perception that safety is eroding. Every effort to find the money to ease that perception turns into an argument. Police integration would go toward fixing that problem and an assortment of other headaches as well. The burbs need a healthy downtown as much as anyone else.
It needs to be at least explored, if not proposed outright.
