Penticton’s new RCMP Superintendent shared a look back at 2023 and ahead to 2024 in her first presentation to city council on Feb. 6.
Supt. Beth McAndie presented the final quarterly report for 2023 which spans from October to December 2023. Penticton saw a 17 per cent drop in crime overall for those months, she said.
Property crimes dropped overall by about nine percent, or 382 files from 2022 to 2023, while violent crime had a nine per cent increase, rising by 86 cases from 1,006 to 1,082.
The 36 per cent drop in commercial break-and-enters, the nine per cent drop in residential break-and-enters and the 43 per cent drop in all other break-and-enters was highlighted in regards to property crime.
The only category of property crime that rose from 2022 to 2023 was fraud, which matches a province-wide trend, while all other categories decreased.
“Public awareness and messaging is key to combating this crime type,” said McAndie. “Our teams continue to make efforts to investigate these reports and we also encourage the public to reach out to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Center and this can be done through their online reporting system.”
McAndie noted that breaking down the increase in violent crimes shows a third of the reports were from domestic incidents. One person was also responsible for four assault files, largely against loss prevention officers.
Addressing the increase in domestic violence was one of the focuses of the presentation. McAndie said that the majority of the couples had a history of prior similar incidents, and that the department’s special victims unit was working with many local organizations on the issue, particularly on building trust and finding ways to reduce barriers to reporting.
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Building on previous years, McAndie also promised to pursue the community’s priority with regards to repeat offenders. She spoke to her meetings with the department’s rebranded prolific offender management team, which is now the crime reduction unit.
“This team is actively engaged in ongoing investigations associated to repeat offenders and sits monthly at the Kelowna regional hub and is actively engaged in drug trafficking investigations and I look forward to reporting more next quarter,” said McAndie.
One of the other new initiatives that McAndie also highlighted was the EWA program, which shifts resources to increase the officers assigned to each of the four watches.
“This approach will address the extra calls for service to cover shift change impacts and act as backfill for our newly created integrated crisis response team, who may be away on leave or involved in training opportunities.”
The crisis response team, colloquially known as Car 40, was praised for already having had 80 proactive interactions with members of the community since Jan. 8.
“That’s proactive work, which is fabulous, in a few short weeks already,” said Mayor Julius Bloomfield. “It’s really good to hear that they have hit the ground running.”
The program pairs together a psychiatric nurse with an officer to respond to mental health crisis calls instead of more conventional police responses. The team also has been working at getting out into the community to interact with the most vulnerable members.
McAndie ended the presentation with a look at the plan for Penticton over the next few months, including general strategic planning, policing plans for summer months during the tourist boom and disaster response training.
Proactive enforcement is also going to be a focus, with work on using data to drive the most effective use of officers given the high workload they carry in Penticton.
“We will be using crime reduction strategies such as comstat, hotspots and or pinpoint policing,” said McAndie. “This is deploying our resources to those areas within our community where we know there is an increased property crime in an effort to deter or take enforcement action.
The detachment will also be rolling out improved social media and communications, working with the local ad hoc communication team and the regional RCMP media relations officer to engage with the public on crime trends, reduction and other issues.