Terry van Seters describes his three minutes with North Cowichan council to state his case on the Chemainus and area policing situation as “not a very rewarding experience.”
The former Chemainus detachment officer presented a petition that garnered nearly 1,000 signatures to council leading up to a Wednesday, March 17 virtual meeting, bringing to light an agreement made in 1998 for a certain level of police service for residents not only of Chemainus, but for the complete north zone coverage area to include Crofton, Westholme, three First Nations reserves, and all of the area south to Herd Road that incorporates half of Maple Bay and the back side of Maple Mountain.
The matter was brought before council to discuss the informal petition regarding the service levels and moved up on the agenda to accommodate North Cowichan/Duncan RCMP Insp. Chris Bear for his input.
Bear acknowledged the response time for the detachment to calls in the Chemainus area is 16 minutes while it’s nine minutes in the rest of North Cowichan.
But he said 64 priority-one calls were received from Chemainus last year, compared to 811 in the rest of the municipality and the detachment is working with increasingly limited resources and manpower.
“If we increase service in Chemainus, we’ll have to decrease it in other areas,” Bear said.
“It’s difficult to be everywhere. When we get a call, we do the best we can to deal with the situation, but other calls can start getting backed up. While the number of calls is lower in Chemainus compared to the rest of North Cowichan, we know we can’t turn a blind eye to them, but it’s the volume of the calls is what we need to look at.”
Bear said times have changed for police in his 27 years in the RCMP and the amount of paperwork and reports to be filled out by officers has skyrocketed in that period, taking much time out of every officer’s work schedule, and away from other police duties.
“It’s time consuming and expensive,” he said.
“We are looking to the municipality to tell us what their wishes are, while keeping in mind that we must consider the safety (of the police officers) as well.”
The number of calls for service has continually been brought up as the reason for not increasing policing in Chemainus and the north end. But it’s at the point where many residents simply don’t bother to call because of the lengthy response time from police or lack of a follow-up.
Related story: Police presence petition presented to North Cowichan council
Newspaper articles from 1998 pinpointed an agreement was formulated to give the region 24/7 police protection in lieu of the former Chemainus detachment being absorbed into the North Cowichan/Duncan detachment.
Van Seters posed two questions during his short presentation time.
First, he asked if there was anything that would compel the municipality to honour the promises of an enhanced patrol through zone policing made to the residents of the north end in 1998 when the detachment was closed and whether a formal petition, as described under the Community Charter, would provide any more incentive for the municipality to honour those promises.
Van Seters then asked whether the municipality has the authority to instruct the officer in charge of the RCMP to honour those promises by instituting a defined zone policing strategy that would see two municipal officers committed to policing the north end with 24-hour coverage, and working out of a recognizable police facility in the area.
He doesn’t feel any satisfactory answers were provided, with statistics replayed from the last 20 years for police issues in Chemainus, calls for service and serious incidents in comparing the need for police presence in the area to the rest of North Cowichan.
Mayor Al Siebring said he struggled with the notion that council should be held responsible for a promise made by a previous council when the realities of policing, and North Cowichan’s budget priorities, have changed significantly since then.
“That promise was made by another council 23 years ago, and I have a problem with being asked to be held to it,” he said.
Van Seters said he thought he’d be able to speak further on the issue at the end of the long meeting during public input, but that chance didn’t happen. “I was all prepared to rebut all of the stats and they kept referring to Chemainus,” he said.
Council passed a motion requesting that staff bring forward a formal report outlining the various options, including pros and cons, for increasing the police presence in Chemainus and Crofton.
“This is my suggestion to the residents of the north end of the municipality, do not fabricate calls for service from the RCMP,” pointed out van Seters.
“But you must report every crime to the police. If your garden gnome is stolen, if a display item in front of your store is stolen, if the chain link fence around your industrial facility is cut, if you hear a scream late in the night on the street outside your house, if you see someone in your backyard after dark, report it. The last two items may get a physical response from the detachment. The others will not, but are legitimate police issues that should form part of Insp. Bear’s statistics in deciding how to deploy his resources.”
Van Seters added another key point that needs to be addressed is the mayor and council showing taxpayers how much time the 32 police officers on municipal contract spend responding to issues in the areas under provincial contract.
“That time is time where the police officers you pay for are not responding to your needs,” he indicated.
With the time he’s invested not producing a worthwhile result, van Seters said he’s retired and tired, has no interest in a career in politics despite an offer to consider it and is not inclined to pursue the matter further.
“I’m afraid you will have to find another champion,” he noted.
- with a file from Robert Barron, Cowichan Valley Citizen.
