When police departments in the Greater Victoria region should be working more closely together, the planned disbanding of the Regional Crime Unit is a step backward for co-ordinated policing and a step ahead for the crooks.
The Saanich Police Department has served notice it will pull out of the regional unit, formed to pursue prolific property offenders across municipal boundaries, at the end of the year. It will withdraw $621,000 in funding, three officers and a civilian staff member, effectively dissolving the unit as a regional entity 鈥� only the West Shore and Sooke RCMP will be left.
The RCU was formed in 2008 and at one point had 15 officers doing covert surveillance and intelligence-gathering to track property criminals. But the Victoria Police Department pulled out in 2009, taking with it $500,000 in funding and four officers. After Central Saanich, North Saanich and Sidney withdrew from the unit last year, it is little surprise that Saanich has also decided to opt out.
鈥淲e were sticking with RCU out of loyalty and not being objective,鈥� said Saanich Mayor Frank Leonard.
Seven police departments serving 340,000 people doesn鈥檛 seem practical. Beyond duplication of services, the multiplicity of law-enforcement agencies can result in fractured response to an incident, such as the Oak Bay murder-suicide case in 2007 in which five people died. That incident was plagued by confusion and dispatching problems, and officers from three departments couldn鈥檛 figure out who was in charge.
Commissioner Wally Oppal called for regional police forces in Greater Vancouver and Greater Victoria, after concluding a unified force likely would have caught serial killer Robert Pickton sooner.
鈥淐riminals do not respect the territorial jurisdiction of individual police forces,鈥� Oppal wrote in his report on missing women. 鈥淭o the contrary, they can purposefully evade detection by carrying out their activities across boundaries and exploiting gaps in traditional law enforcement investigative processes.
鈥淢ulti-jurisdictional investigations can falter, even when police forces have overarching co-operative relationships and general lines of communication. 鈥� Police can always pick up the phone to call a counterpart in another force to request information or assistance, but this ad hoc approach is insufficient in a multi-jurisdictional investigation.鈥�
Victoria favours one regional police service, but other municipalities have little appetite for amalgamating police departments. Instead, they opted to integrate particular aspects, and the Regional Crime Unit is one of nine such units, which include the Vancouver Island Integrated Major Crime Unit and the Integrated Road Safety Unit.
But the weakness of that arrangement is evident with the impending dissolution of the RCU 鈥� when one piece is pulled out, the whole structure eventually collapses. Nothing compels a department to join or stay in an integrated unit. The units are vulnerable to budget cuts as municipalities understandably place local interests ahead of regional interests.
It鈥檚 unlikely Greater Victoria municipalities will ever agree to form a regional police force. The province keeps dipping its toes into the water, but lacks the fortitude to jump all the way in, hiding behind talk of a range of 鈥渄elivery models.鈥�
Meanwhile, the good work accomplished by the integrated units shows what co-operation can do. Maybe some day, that co-operation can go all the way.
