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Penticton RCMP officer retires to tackle community role

It is a step back, but not completely away from the near lifetime of service for Sgt. Rick Dellebuur.
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A 38-year veteran of the RCMP

It is a step back, but not completely away from the near lifetime of service for Sgt. Rick Dellebuur.

After 38 years with the RCMP, Dellebuur is retiring from his position as front-line supervisor for the Penticton RCMP and is taking on the role of regional co-ordinator for the South Okanagan-Similkameen Crime Stoppers.

Growing up in a rural Manitoba town of about 1,000 people just north of Winnipeg, Dellebuur was already embedded in police work with his father being the local justice of the peace.

“The police were always coming to our house for warrants and back then people used to come to our house to pay tickets basically,” Dellebuur said.

He said it was always a career he was interested in pursuing and he joined the RCMP in Winnipeg in 1977 and graduated from basic training in Regina in May of 1978. His first posting was Sparwood B.C., and Dellebuur first came to Penticton in 1985.

During his first 10-year stint in Penticton, Dellebuur was on the front lines for the Music 91 riots that took place at the province-sponsored music festival featuring MC Hammer.

“I worked that night, we were actually at the MC Hammer concert, and we got downtown. It was just chaos downtown,” Dellebuur said. “We were down there and you could just all of a sudden hear breaking glass and the crowd moving towards us. It was quite an experience and not necessarily a good experience. You just dealt with it at the time.”

Most of the rioters were from out of town and had come for the festival, going so far as to roll Penticton’s iconic Peach right off it’s foundation and into the water.

There was a silver lining to the riot however, as it sparked the initial ideas of what has become an integral part of policing today.

“We had a lot of video, not that we had necessarily taken, but just tourists had taken,” Dellebuur said.

The combination of video from the local news outlets and tourists helped identify some of the rioters.

“We had quite good success identifying these individuals. A lot of them had come from the Kelowna area,” said Dellebuur. “One person said ‘there was my grandson, that was my grandson there by the Peach.’ People had seen that because it was on television.”

The usage of video, public tips and the media helped reign in the chaos of the harrowing event and sparked an idea that lives on today. The assistance from the public motivated Dellebuur and a fellow officer to look into Crime Stoppers, which was in its infancy as a program at the time.

“It wasn’t a new idea, Crime Stoppers had been in the States for awhile, but it was perhaps newer to us and when you see the success, we say hey this is something that works,” Dellebuur said. “The members were experiencing first hand the benefit of getting the information to the media and thus to the public and coming back.”

That idea turned into 6,792 tips that helped police recover 75 weapons, $1.8 million in stolen property and $14.8 million worth of drugs through the program’s first 22 years.

“We got a lot of great community people involved in the program and fundraising and it continues on today,” Dellebuur said.

Dellebuur left Penticton in 1995 for Prince George and returned in 2000.

“I wanted come back here, I’ve always loved the community and I had the opportunity to come back here. It fit well at that time of my life. I’ve always enjoyed the area,” Dellebuur said.

The step away from the frontline supervisor position with the RCMP may actually bank Dellebuur more time in the community he said.

“The role has kind of changed. It used to be all Crime Stoppers, now it’s Crime Stoppers and community policing co-ordinator for the whole area.”

He will oversee community policing efforts in the Regional District including Princeton, Summerland, Osoyoos, Oliver, Keremeos, Okanagan Falls, Kaleden and of course, Penticton. While that’s a large area of coverage, Dellebuur said that getting in on the ground level and creating personal connections in the greater community is the key.

“That’s what community policing is. It’s getting involved in your community, working together to address the concerns and problems to come up with solutions and work them,” Dellebuur said.

He said much of the game has changed since the two phones that Crime Stoppers in Penticton was initially comprised of. The nuts and bolts have changed, said Dellebuur, but the heart of the job remains the same.

“The technology has advanced dramatically, but policing is still a people game. Going out there, speaking with people getting names, following up leads, gathering evidence. We have all this technology that helps us do that more than we did when I first started, but it is still very much a people job, you have to work with people.”

He hopes the new position is going to give him the opportunity to get more involved in the communities that may not have the staff to work on community policing efforts or recruit for and manage volunteer programs like community watch.

After a lifetime of public service, it’s likely Dellebuur will never fully step away from his career.

“I have no regrets of the decision. I’ve enjoyed my career with the RCMP, so much so that the job I’m going into is still going to be kind of a continuation of what I’ve been doing,” Dellebuur said.

Dellebuur’s last day as front-line supervisor is Friday.