241_Wallis_RCMP-History_2010.mp3

otter.ai

18.04.2023

no

Speaker 1 0:01

I know that you're interested in soft springs in particular, but we don't have a lot of history of Saltspring in policing on the islands from above asked me to do is kind of start from the beginning. And I've got a presentation here that I got from Ottawa, that's 25 years old. But nice thing about history is, even though it was written 25 years ago, it's still accurate. So I'm gonna go through it a little bit quickly, I'm not going to read the whole pages and pages they sent me. A lot of people know what our history is, from the gloss over some of it. If you have questions about that, or anything, raise your hand and I'll slow down and answer those points. I don't want to bore you with some of the stuff from way back. But I don't want to gloss over things you haven't heard and why we came about. Fortunately, I'm kind of a history buff myself. So I paid a lot of attention to history, both in the force and I mean, the genealogy as well. So I'm doing the patient and family history. So anything along those lines, we have a question about, just feel free to ask. I'm gonna remember since February of 1978. When I first joined the mountain police, they sent me to Regina were, they sent all of the nets to training, one of the finest training facilities in the world. And part of what helps us keep our reputation, despite what you may hear in some local papers now and again, some of the high profile incidents, we're still very proud of the work we do and the service we provide for Canada. And we're doing that around the world. It's really mind boggling for a lot of people in other countries to see a policeman is the national symbol. A policeman in red Serge is recognized as a Canadian symbol. A lot of countries were police are corrupt, and they have lots of issues. The people in those countries are just amazed what we have here to have to go into Regina in those days, and I was talking to some people earlier about the changes, flip flops all the time. Those days were a lot of evacuation problems. So you're the one from Victoria BC, I wasn't allowed to come back to Korea. So they sent me to a term in Saskatchewan. And no offense few people from Saskatchewan. It was a wonderful experience these great people in Saskatchewan, people ever could foreign people bend over backwards for you. If you're new to town and didn't matter. They rocked me as a member of the community and family. So we're really had a good time in Saskatchewan for 10 years, went from redriver, the Saskatoon for lupus to Watrous, into Fort propell and Iraqi marshes to Charlotte, and then to Fort propelled. And then my kids said the allergy issues with the grain Dustin Saskatchewan. So this is after 10 years, I come back to DC for the second week of Richmond, in small town Saskatchewan in the big city 151 men in Richmond at the time, they were to check them out, midway through Denver, C sharp and now Salzburg. So I've been in everything from A to Mandy Catherine missing a few 100 people to the big city of Richmond. So I have what they call a well rounded career. As I say I've kept the interest in policing after that in the history. So if you have any questions, feel free to ask one

Speaker 1 3:43
all these graphics now back to the start of Canada. As we all know our history is we had Quebec and Ontario which are Upper and Lower Canada at the time. And the rest of us pretty much open territory, the North West territory Rupert's land, and there wasn't much going on there. But Canada wanted to exert sovereignty over that they wanted to take that as part of candidates with the Americans from coming up. There's a lot of debate about what they're going to do when going to happen. And then in 1873, the Cypress Hills Westford happened. And Cypress goes massacre was a bunch of whiskey peddlers down in the States or in Fort Benton, Montana had some horses pulling from natives that were from north of what was known as the United States at that point in time. So they came up to get the horses and managed to kill off a whole bunch of the natives. And that kind of spurred up a lot of interest, but the sovereignty of Canada and how are they going to manage that so what they did is decided that they were going to police it. Now one of the big key differences To the American frontier and JT in front here was settlement drove out from eastern United States went into the lawless parts of the West. And as the settlement grew up, then they would hire marshals and sheriffs and they were policing after the pupil got their candidate a little differently. They decided to have the police, not the first people on there wasn't a lot of settlement. They wanted to have sovereignty over that kind of that part of the country. So the Senate recruit posters and formed the Northwest Mounted Police. what's called the march West, is what came about and how the Northwest model police came forward into the front of your country and kind of took on the sovereignty and made Canada just part of this part of Canada joined in 75, recruits and men were put together to form the first contingent coming out. And the great march West is they brought their supplies and all the manpower and left from was called for different at the time, which was Winnipeg floor for dairy and head into what was then called pile of bones, which is no Regina. For goop up was the place that one of the first places that they went to down in the states you see the American flag there, that's where the American whiskey Panthers were they were right close to the border.

Speaker 1 6:41
The first commissioner was commissioner McLeod and him along with his 2075 when started setting up camp and dividing up into detachments, and starting to patrol on the border. Again, to exert sovereignty, to keep the natives the time from rebelling, these are great uprising, they do make sure the locking for safer settlers become. Another thing that the Acadian government did that was a little different than the Americans. Again, because we had the law coming out first before the settlers, they didn't have as much conflict with the Americans. They have lots of history and lots of movies and whatnot about the Indian wars and Toronto and Senegal and all that. Well, in Canada, mostly in the prairies, not so much in BC here. What they did is they went out in several treaties with NATO bands at the time. So there was rules in place of how they were going to coexist in this land.

Speaker 1 7:54
One of the kind of binding things in Canadian history is government decided they wanted to attach to the United. So they created a railway that was going right across the country, of course, the Pacific Railway. But again, that needs to be policed. So they police that by sending a bunch of police along the roadway to make sure when and the gold rush in the North was also a big problem, whether it was prospectors coming in through Alaska, and coming into the planting gold fields. And they wanted to make sure again, the policeman was there first. So they sent members into the children pass and the white pass, and you had to have certain amount of food and supplies on you before you're allowed to come to Canada. There was a monitored place to check that and make sure before they let you into the country. That'd be the real old customs and immigration. The one interesting thing about wild places, we've been tasked over the decades and decades of doing you name it, when it comes to government is not just what we think of today as traditional policing. Our members act in remote communities and then lots of areas has immigration. That's customs that US law enforcement of any nature. Big or small, they all get involved. Northwest rebellion in 1885. Again, our members are involved in that and working with the Canadian government the Canadian militia and reinforcing their members never members reinforcing ours and trying to keep the violence down the rebellion. Chilkoot pass

Speaker 1 9:50
can post don't respond, please. King 79. Eastern post is the east end of the Cypress Hills Fort Macleod is where The main course was and on Eastern Cypress Hills is called East and the story detachment there today are stationed in tribe and extended with her neighbor to the west. As you can see, names are always what they see we have to kind of figure out what relation they have. As they managed to escape across the country, in order to effectively police it, they had to break into detachment and that's what are detachments are called how they came about. We have some spooky Casper here where detachment up the main force. So the main force was divided up and went into what we call divisions. Each division is BC, and then from divisions, it's gone through a number of different things. We were subdivisions, subdivisions became districts were part of our district, and then the those broke the smaller into detachments. 1999 when the Boer War was happening down in Africa, and anyone was sending lots of troops there, there was a contingent amount of police. And because of that contingency, and its efforts in the Boer War, in 1904. Good distinction of royal was added to the mountain police, and we've given the royal police in each of the wars, we've had contagious going instead of just resigning to my priest and joining us forces, which happened to some extent, members would sign up for duty and mostly doing photo duties in the foreign countries that were attached to the Army Corps.

Speaker 1 11:53
And for that, force duties included regarding gradient enemy aliens, and any of those other associated duties.

Speaker 1 12:09
This is a print shop in Ukraine. And one of the things the bottom police got into because said we do everything was getting into intelligence and into what was the security services or before what is no CSIS all the spy type stuff the CIA stuff is what the police were involved with in some degree. The United States have the DEA, Drug Enforcement Administration, the ATF are called Tobacco firearms, CIA Central Intelligence Agency, FBI, county sheriff's, city police, municipal police, the RCMP does all of those functions, over the years has done all of those functions. There's a general strike in Winnipeg. And of course, my police would call into to call the strike, which unfortunately became one of the more violent outbursts that were involved in. The promo scores, things were one registering enemy aliens who were customs immigration work before there was a customs immigration branch we did all of that. This is kind of a funny slide, we talked about modernization the force was 25 years old. The traditions of the force have pretty much been the same since the beginning. We're very proud of the efforts that we put forward. And our drill and our discipline is second to none in the world. Our members are taught, put up with lots of abuse in situations and also look after themselves and keep themselves and community safe. As society evolves, in order to be relevant, we have to evolve as well. So there's lots of different terms that come forward. But it's important that we keep up with what's going on in the world and in our communities and change for that. We became very adept and very good at certain scientific innovations. And this is fingerprinting where the catalog and figure out the fingerprints and Canada has always been on the leading edge of doing fingerprint work. Which one of the member character probably tell more about than I can take with you. And again, graduating the different services we can use some dogs to dog service or marine service again with the sovereignty and keeping patrol patrolling the waters. Air Services again so they can fly north we have we're more than most most detachment is it In the Arctic Circle, so we will right from below the 49th parallel in the Arctic Circle and from coast to coast, northern dog controls. It's a rock was a supply vessel that's well known in the history that went through the Northwest Passage many years ago. There because Inca affairs will go much above, but that's basically Russian, the fact that and came to Canada, and really gave us a heads up on what the spy world was all all about. This is what they call one of the modern day police. Back in 20, memories, we have Robbie in the uniform and then one in the suit. Then we have what we have here is the culture. In fact, in the head of the legend at the marketplace, was of course built out of Hollywood, and Hollywood movies. And the old adage the money always gets there and all comes from that impact. And a lot of those different things that happen were they were shown as single handedly kicking the west of Canada was having romances of heroes, Marie was the most famous movies

Speaker 1 16:23
other cultural things are the band is started up back in the beginning in the 1800s. And we've had different bands and part of that because that was a lot of discussion as to whether it has any value or not in modern policing, because we're supposed to be out there. But again, trying to show a different side of the people that we deal with. And of course, the famous music variety, which has that same debate, and all the members of us arrived are police, persons, men and women. But they're not actually in policing duties, but they're out there giving that image. And image is important. Because the image is what gives us a lot of connections, a lot of networking, versus a lot of guys valuing other countries when we want information, we want cooperation. Because we're a highly respected organization and we have this enrich, we get much better cooperation that we would be if we were just another country asking for help. When we came into the RCMP, like he said, 74 I believe before that the women were allowed. Also, back then you couldn't be married for a number of years, and you had to ask permission to get married. And you had to have initially seven years of service and $2,000 in the bank before you're allowed to be married. Again, with the rule changes and neck and 75 I believe it was we accepted married members probably heard lots about CSIS, the introduction of the creation of many Security Intelligence Service, which was kind of what RCA is now, the amount of police were doing security services under the RCMP Security Services section. And through the FL Q crisis, a lot of other things. They manage that they were doing the intelligence and information. The real advantage of having the one police force that did everything was that we had a lot of networking, a lot of connections, people would start out in the field, learning how to do basic police when they go into these other fields, and have a better understanding of how policing worked and how communications work. Because a lot of politics. In those years, they created a separate agency being CSIS. And of course, when you have a separate agency, you have these these rifts in the field turf wars that aren't as bad as what the Americans are, but still hampers what we can do whenever he was under the same roof. Even though we have different sections and different reporting lines. The commissioners boss at the end of the day in any type of turf war grievance could end up in the commissioner's desk, and he was settling for both sides so he didn't have to go on 10 type of arbitration or any political area to get that work done. Fourth thing we did skip over here. Repaying Nikki 73 The Northwest Mounted Police was formed. Next Gen four became the royal Northwest Mounted Police, which was indignation threatened granted by marking in England and the next 20 it there was a Dominion police force that looked after the Capital Region Ottawa in that area. And their royal Mumford spinal police was out doing rural areas in Western Canada. And as time went on, the Dominion police was absorbed in the 1920 the Dominion Increase in the RC ers, the Royal Northwest Mounted Police joined between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And that's the same designation we have now. The original uniform in 1874 pillbox helmet, and that's what the war was based after. European in which the English uniforms, and the red Serge is so that when you're shot, nobody can see your blood. Nobody can tell if you're hurt. That's where that history comes from. So they went to the pillbox, helmet 1897, which is more of the the timeframe what the uniforms would look like. So it is a paramilitary organization that was following military lines. And then in 1920, when the joined the police force, they wanted to get a bit away from the military and be more seen as policing, and went to Stetson, and a different look than what a military uniform was. So in 1984, this was written that was the end, but there's been lots going on since then. So I'll just add to it. The big thing about policing is that we have to be relevant to what the needs of the community are. And we have to have programs and interactions with the community so that we're actually policing the way it wants to be policed. We're not the military dictatorship. People have rights, respect those rights as policing those long, we have to adapt to all the different changes. The biggest change in policing came in 1984, I believe it was when the King Charter was introduced. And it came a whole new set of rules that we had to abide by. And charter issues became part of court cases. Because lots of legal goes around around in policing, and things change. But really, it's not that much different than it was way back when a number of years ago, 20 years ago started talking about community policing. And especially in the cities, they need to get community policing, and they have these little offices you see in malls and whatnot. But most small places, community policing never changed wasn't a new innovation, with a community policing since 1873. Community policing means being involved in your community. And that's what we try to do here on Salzburg. In many of the provinces, had their own provincial police BC had the BC provincial police to 1950. And as time goes on, different political factions that look for ways to save money and to get better service for their dollar. And they found for one reason or another that they wanted to contract, the amount of police didn't work. And by doing that, we've taken over BC, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba, the Maritime Provinces, most of them for them that came into Confederation came policed by monopolies. So the only big police forces out of the model police provincially is the opp. Provincial Police and Quebec has Quebec provincial police. So they do all the stuff in the provincial capitals such as Saltspring. If we were in Ontario, you'd have opp here. Correct. You have to be up here. The following still has to Newfoundland Constabulary, but they mostly just do the bigger cities, outlying areas. Some cities, the bigger cities across the metro Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Regina, they have their own police forces, Surrey Burnaby, which are just as big as some of those others have elected to stay with the amount of police mostly because it's, it's cheaper. It's a cost savings. The philosophy of the mountain police is a little different than many municipal police forces. We take our recruits, we send them to smaller detachments hopefully, somebody sent to the bigger detaches right away. But then after a few years, we tried to move him around and give them different experience. If you had a small police force such in Salzburg Island, and something big would happen once in 37 years, like the murder we had 2007 Diamond Fulford you've had no experience with that. Because it only happens when I'm 31 to 37 years, then you're gonna get a disadvantage to do it properly and get to the right answers. But because we've been moved from detachment, detachment over the years and have different experience, but I think the detachment was only for two policemen and Testaments were 151. I've been to a number of murders and know what procedures for that and when that would ever happen to you Are, we're able to guide people that have never been to one and make sure that things were done properly. So that's one of the bigger advantages for the smaller community is having an amount of choice is we get a variety of experiments is by making all these moves. The downside is we don't connect as well as the community, sometimes some of our members come in, and because they're strangers, and we're here for a number of years, then they move on, you lose all that information about who's who and who's connected to whom. And those things that are important. When you're trying to investigate something, especially, we are as unique as somebody who's related to recovery, they're wholly different people, or where's this location? Most people, suspend your central is the intersection of site here, the central avenues, way up off long harbor. So if you get somebody that doesn't know, when you're gonna settle, they're gonna go to the wrong place. So those little nuances are important for the device to learn. And there's only learn by interacting with the community and get to know. So that's what we tried to do. We try to instill that in the members, we try to give them the education they need, in the smaller places. And so we've learned slowly. And the steps for investigating the murder

Speaker 1 26:18
are the same as the steps for investigating a common assault, somebody gets slapped in the face. The steps are the same. The gravity of the offense, and the injury is different, and how much time and resources you put into it are different. But you can use the same steps for pretty much all policing. So we'd like to teach them all the things that we do to do things in the right order. And when you get to the bigger things that know how to do it, because it's the same basic procedure, you need to talk to people need to take statements need to collect evidence, to secure the scene, need to get the experts that you need, such as autopsy pathology, to do their thing. But that's only works if you keep the chain of events, the chain of evidence going so smoothly, is a very good community for young people to learn. And because we do have enough to happen, to be able to train them, not enough to overwhelm them. It all comes back to the city school community policing. Again, it's what we've been doing for 107 years, is interacting with the community. And knowing what the community wants. There's lots of different laws out there, there's literally 1000s of laws. There's federal law, which is criminal code as part of provincial laws, such as traffic X BD, is municipal laws, which we don't have as but this will ask us, we're not a municipality. But we do have bylaws, staff original district, an original district has laws that were helping to enforce. And literally, there's hundreds and hundreds and 1000s of different laws in different sections. We can't know them all. We know a lot of them. We have to figure out what the law is and what's the intent of the law, and then trying to slay it. And one of the best examples, I can probably give me a paycheck. Paycheck is culturally acceptable on salzburgerland. You see it all the time. It's against the law, everybody that hates it. But would I really be serving this community is this community want me to spend my hours by please with their hours, pitching it to traders and giving them tickets? I've come to the opinion that that's not this community wants it even though it is a law that we could enforce, we don't, because the community will have to play some part of it. There's laws on books, in many different places, especially in bylaws that are made from long time ago. That really the last time you tried to enforce those laws, especially in some of the prairie towns, about horses in town where you can give somebody a terrible, horrible horse in a bar. You're not gonna see that. But if you want to expend time, taking every life to the nth degree, want to deal with that stuff. You could. But we don't do that. We try and make it relevant to what the community wants. Some things some fractures community may want. Others don't. Again, Salzburg another good one, there will be marijuana use. And the debate between those should be legal or not. Now for us, it's not an issue until they make it legal, which is for those that have a license. And those people have a license. We don't do anything with we don't give them a hard time. We don't ask them because they do have it's legal. If they don't, it's right for us to see this law as something that we will enforce. So even though there's a debate in the community, it's not clear cut one way or the other. We have to follow what the law says. So it's a really fun laying sometimes which will give the community what they want, and what the law says, and not getting into the political end of things. So we try and do what we call being without fear or favor, from not trying to make everybody happy in the liking us. We're not afraid or anybody else. So we do what we think there's right and go down the middle of the road, as much as possible, enforcing those laws, stringently, they need it, and less stringently, they don't. And that is what policing on especially on Saltspring Island has evolved in the last number of years. Hopefully, we're making headway and keeping everybody happy with being safe, safe communities is our number one mandate, is making sure everybody's safe. And we do it using the tools of the law as ways to kind of penalize you or convince you that you need to follow what the law says. Questions?

Speaker 2 31:01
What are the qualifications for recruitment nowadays? How do you advance? Besides that?

Speaker 1 31:10
Well, that's very complex question, because there's no answer, recruiting is easy. There's a recruiting process where they have to write an exam, and then go through the process. Again, historically, we really started to had to be certain height, couldn't be married, you had to be single, you had to be a good character, and good health. And all these things came into play, could be a female, until 1974. Now, we can't just go anybody that passes the test, of course, through the due process, and chose to have an aptitude for this job. Once they get in your to capital, as we almost always have, and then take six months of trading their time is very good in a few weeks over the different years, and they try to condense or expand things. But for the most part, it's nine months or six months of training was nine months for our man horses, but they got rid of those 65. So once you go to depo, and you train, then you go anywhere in Canada, there was many periods of time, that's when I joined where you couldn't come back your home province. And currently, you can come back to home province, you can go back home home. And there's less debatable if that's a good thing or not. Once you've done your six months in Regina, you get assigned to a detachment, then you're assigned to a seasoned police officer for another six months, and you're on probation for two years. But the first six months of that two years, you have to be monitored by a senior police officer initially riding side by side to get him in the car. And then as you progress and show that you're able to do your job, you get your leash lengthened, and you're gonna be grown a bit. From day one. As soon as you get your New Testament, you're a placement for different arrest people, whatever your police police to do, but you're still not fully training. In Regina, they teach you to theory of police work. But now you have to learn to practice. So after six months in the company with another police officer, they assess you, and you pass that now your next year and a half a probationary member. And unless you do something grossly wrong, you're likely going to get passed on from that into the next level of pay for the pay scale at the beginning. So that you start off with less pain. And then after three years, we have two full customer salary and promotion comes along the way, there's really no set term or time. It's changed over the years again, and depending on what your interests are and what your aptitudes are in your skills. Different jobs have different ranks. So if you want a different job three different things, you can apply for different positions and that process changes constantly. starts from here. We have one sergeant doesn't need to be here. One four, and six constables. So does the policeman on the island. And the sergeant is the boss. And then Corporal is second charge obviously. He's called me up since you Microsoft's in charge of operations. It's his job to make sure everything's running smoothly. All the files are monitored. Well, I like to tell the customers on the road is a kind of like independent businessman. I don't tell them everything what they're going to do. They know what the job is, whether they're gonna write speeding tickets, whether they have files need to work on as people call them with complaints. They get assigned to different police officers and they go out and investigate the file and they keep on As in their queue on the computer as to what they have to do with the diabetes system, they make sure that nothing falls through the cracks. And then once it's done has to be approved by the supervisor because the options are usually. So they go out every day with their queue of files, what gets phoned in that day, plus anything else they want to do, we keep them active in school liaison, trying to be interactive with the community. And practical enforcement, of course, is important. So we keep accidents down to a minimum. So they manage themselves for large part because we supervise them. So they have a real big responsibility, and have a lot of work to do what they want to do individually. And some will excel in certain things. And there'll be something of interest to them. So put a lot of energy into that, and others works on something else. So hopefully, by having a blend of these different people from different detachments across the country that come together with different knowledge and expertise, we can share that amongst ourselves, and those who have particular interests that help those that don't have the knowledge in that area. And we get everything done that needs to be done. Plus the simple philosophy of

Unknown Speaker 36:16
language requirements.

Speaker 1 36:22
Other languages, aside from French, officially, we're a bilingual country and French and English are, you need one or the other, you don't need both. I don't speak French. Until I don't have an aptitude in the languages, which I believe I'm here to label English. If you speak another language, it's a bonus at different times. of recruitment, there's times when we lost recruits, and don't have many, so the competition is very fierce. And there's other times that we don't need that many recruits. And we have a lot of Africans. And that's quite rare right now. So only the best are chosen, or what I believe to be the best. So if you have more language capabilities, that's going to be seen as an extra asset. And if you're in those times, where it's a real tough choice, that may get those people in a little sooner. The downside of that? Is that all that why is this organization sometimes, and even that gets you in the door, doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna put you somewhere you can use your language. Because once you sign on the dotted line when you're in Canada, hopefully, our staff and people kind of marry those up but doesn't always happen that way. And, but it doesn't matter. We're in Europe, you can be finally language very useful. When I was fresh out of Regina, Saskatoon, that was getting a trend of him leaving your service. And he was actually born in Germany, and came Academy he was young and then joined the police. But he married a French university teacher. So we're driving down the road one day, he was talking to his hippie bus, on the old school bus that was all made categorized, at these hippies in it. And, of course, going on searching looking for drugs and whatnot. And they start talking French. So he says a couple of words from the French, because I don't know what he's saying because I unfortunately speak to one language. So then I start talking German. We touched on the German remember all that much Germans when he was a boy but enough to get by. So they looked at one another. There was two guys and the girl what the hell it was I taught English, that I was not excited what they were saying. But language is a very useful skill to have. And I would love to be bilingual and trilingual. I worked with one guy that spoke eight different languages. And he was great. Over in small towns scattered work on it and reserved that language for the most part was of any value to him there because we didn't have a lot of those countries that he could speak those languages at that present post, but he was only there for ancient evil Gods over his career of those languages will come into into play.

Speaker 2 39:12
You're attachment started on Salt Spring?

Speaker 1 39:18
Well, I don't know what year it started. It's changed rubedo more than I do. She's been around longer. But it was the Northwest mounted police there was I believe in offices or basic virtual police stations here. So probably the 95th you want to switch they would have had some of your foot in there after the changes on the Gulf Islands that I do know is that the detachment here it used to be called Ganges detachment because it was in the settlement of Ganges and chased the Salzburg in 1990. You want to change the name, and that's something that the force did to try and more represent different detachments across the province or across the country. It's just because you happen to be in one little town you please the bigger area, they want the names the corporate, the bigger area, not just where you have to be having your office many years ago, before the changes to the other Gulf Island detachments generally I don't was pleased, actually, by Saltspring was a period of a number of years that there was a vessel in Salzburg, and they were policing the waters around the different islands from the vessel from here. There's also one in C Sharp and in around 19 II think what could have been earlier than that is the Amalgamated all those pulled them out of the smaller detachments. For more than an hour in Prince Rupert and got the big catamarans, he started policing up and down the coast, instead of having a little marine detachments, the mid to big recap. So that changed the complexity of what the police force on Saltspring was. And then when they formed the outer golf violence, it took the boat from here that we used to have and target Galliano and gave Pender, another policeman, and made that they will go home. And no, that's what they manage right now is one three, it's gonna go down on one mean, and two on Pender, the alleys detachment, and they work together once the forum to please the other islands other than Saltspring. But some of the local changes to what used to be happening here, because we used to send the policeman over down animals on patrol, and from here. Now, when we police, Salzburg Island, and a couple of small islands around, we probably have an easier time of it. As far as transportation goes, than what we had before we actually had to be voting over. And nobody left here. The numbers change. When I came here, five years ago, there were seven members here. Now there's a it's very difficult to change those numbers. The provincial government pays for placement temporarily. And they call eNovation, which is Vancouver headquarters, for BC, you have X number of positions for policemen, to do all the provincial policing in the province. You put them wherever you think you need them. So we have to fight with all of the rest of BC to get any increase in policing here. The good side of that is that because we have a low crime rate, and we have a very good community here, our crime rate numbers are two thirds of our provincial averages. So we don't have as much crime here as other areas. The bad side of that is when we go to fight for more police resources, they use that against us. Well, yeah, population wise, you should have more policemen. Because there's very few policemen who have lots of populations, but you have fun as citizens, basically, you don't have all the crime rate that these other areas have. So we have to send those resources there. So it's very complex, and kind of being penalized for your your good work, be able keep the primary down, so you don't get the extra bodies to perpetuate that. But some of the politics of policing and how that gets managed.

Speaker 2 43:38
I noticed last couple of years that you have foot patrols in the downtown area, is that something that's paying off?

Speaker 1 43:47
We think it is one of the things that then policing changes, they have all these different buzzwords and terms that come up and do a different thing. But three years, or they came up with what they call annual performance planning. And it's gone by different names over different years. Anybody that's been involved in any corporation knows that management by objectives in different terms come about what we're trying to do is focused on what issues we see in trying to be proactive in dealing with the issues, so that we're not just reactive and having lots of problems, then go and try to fix the problem. So we examined the community. We had a community survey here. Four years ago, I think we sent it out to all around town. And you got to check off the boxes of what you felt and drop it off. And we took all that information. And because we're going to and figuring out what are the things that the community wants us to do? Back to connection with the community like I was talking about, and putting our resources where you think that you need it. So we took all that one of the things that we were being told by everybody is that they were tired. The young lovers were tired of not being able to go was parked and able to play because they didn't want the kids hanging around when they have all these undesirable people they're drinking in the park and smoking marijuana and getting into fights and just wasn't a comfortable family park. And they weren't happy with that. So to try and combat that, and bring the product back into a family atmosphere, we went to the CRD parks people. And we said one of the problems that we have is when we drive by the park, people are hiding in the bushes, and we can't see what's going on. So maybe to trim the bushes and come back with additional nice, it's still a friendly, pleasant part. But to cut down some of the bushes so that it was easy for the undesirables to hide from us. Another thing we did is to to as many foot patrols as we can, and get the foot patrols in there so that when we're in there, they know that they're being watched, they're being seen, and hopefully they're gonna not know when we're there or whether we're close by. And I look over the shoulder all the time, so they just go somewhere else. The downside of policing that exact way is the governor he picks up the property, just displacing it. When we first did that three years ago, we ended up pushing them all over to behind the propane tank, and then further out along the beach turned over to an area where there's some trees and whatnot over there. And what do I say don't get up in arms, because the hills people move from the park. And now they're less inhibited, because nobody wants you. And they're trading fires and bonfires and drinking and carousing over there. And now people are worried about their homes, catching fire because all these fires are going on check. So then we had to go and deal with that issue. And they formed a little for a year, a community group that was patrolling the beaches and cleaning up after us people know they're being watched. So it's difficult problem. With the marine people coming up and down the coast this year, they've agreed when they're in court, they will do for us as well, because that's part of our annual performance plan. And being a were one of their clients, they're going to service the whole coast and the coastal detachments. So because that's one of our big plans, they agreed to to assist with us. So you'll sometimes he clicks in there just in the cover off the overalls. Those are up the one of the boats that have come in off of marine section. And they're doing the same thing that we are checking people drinking smoking, being unrelated in the park. So that's how that's all come about. And again, is trying to be responsive to your needs. And listen to what we're being told and manage our resources so we can try and accomplish those things so that we're proactive. So we think it's working back

Speaker 3 47:57
when I was growing up and please for the for Salt Spring Island. So it's quite different now, but I'm remembering when it was the I think it was 1964 and tsunami in Alberni inlet. And because of the initiative, the RCMP, the type gauge attempted in in Tofino notified them that there was some strange behavior, emotion and spoken about burning people out of their houses. And so Pete was killed in the water came in 10 feet 10 feet high over the ground, read the scope mass comes into the canal. And that was really impressive to me because they acted on their own initiative to do that and save everybody's life. And, for contrast, last night on the TPP, that was a special vote. What happened in New Orleans and Canada did send RCMP down there. But the chaos that ensued because people didn't have there was no coordination to look after the people. Nobody seemed to know what they were doing. They were people, dying people Okay ignore, it puts a disaster. And I think that the Earth

Speaker 1 50:13
would hope it wouldn't have been one of the things that we do on this island is work with all the different service agencies and emergency management CRD is created Emergency Management Commission, which I sit on as a board member, along with the fire chief, the ambulance, much beauty to people and any disaster that can befall you on this island, the earthquake, plane crash, flooding, bad weather, we have plans in place. And we've spent hours and hours putting together so that it never happens. We hope to be prepared. And we hope of course never do. Put it into practice. But then being proactive and looking to what could happen. It's really not closing the door after the horses escaped to we have to be ready for any eventuality. So we work on that. Constantly. We meet once or twice, once a month or every second month, we plan scenarios where we practice how we would deal with certain situations. And the emergency service resources you have in this island are great. There's no way if you really think about it, that a policeman can protect you from all what's possibly going to happen. I mean, just the logistics of that is staggering to his mind. But it's not just eight of us. Who's the fire department that there's lots of work that in most communities they don't do. We go into a car accident. car collision or not accidents company cause so percolation and most decathletes, I've worked at Telegraph to investigate the collusion, find out what happened and why and probably rejected whoever the offending party is, we have to, of course, first manage the traffic. Well, there's only one policeman or two police, we're working as hard to investing you suddenly managed to track, we don't do that. Your Fire Service does that for us. Every accident or pleasure we go to they manage the traffic for us. So the services here work very well together, and make everybody safer and much, much more pleasant place to work. Another thing I want to pass on to you is your your young people here. The young people here that we deal with are far and away the best people I've ever placed in that category. We do not have a youth playing problem on Saltspring. We have lots of youth in the schools, we have into little bit trouble now again, but we don't have gang violence. We don't have lots of bully. I mean, some of it's going to happen to try and deal with it when it does. But the general demeanor of youth on the island that we deal with, as positive members come from from Surrey and Langley and other communities. And they're here a couple of weeks of their what's wrong with the kids on the side and actually talk to us. For it's so soft, Salzburg has a very, very lot going for it. It's a good community, to police. It's a good place to live. And most of the members that come here, come back time and time again, that is the gone. That's been the forgotten place. Have we gone?

Speaker 4 53:30
What percentage of the police resources goes into the drug prohibition.

Speaker 1 53:39
There is no set percentage anything. As I said each member manages their, their policing somewhat independently. And we're collaborating together so that everybody does what they like. Some are more keen on the drug stuff than others. Some are more keen on the product stuff for depending on the members you have and the information that you have coming, what the resources were, number one, that community says it's needed. The number two where we get information or complaints about things happening. Every community has a drug problem. I don't think you'll find a community in North America that doesn't have the resources that are put into it or based on how much information comes forward. If people tell us things that we can act on, then we can do something if people tell us you know we have direct health care, well, we know that, but we can't do anything about it on here. So we need information. We're very happy with the level of enforcement that we've been able to do in the last five years on Saltspring. We have lots of information coming forward and we act on that as quickly as we can. And we've managed to arrest in charge of these two drug dealers every year for the five years I've been here and that takes a lot of effort from members and a lot of effort from the community. It So it's not us against them. Again, in policing over the years, it's it's it used to be, then, especially in the cities where it got to be us against them, you got the police were up there trying to be enforcement minded, and the communities were starting to rebel because they didn't, please weren't listening. In small communities, we haven't had that problem, because we have to work together to make it work, we just don't have the, the dynamics and the resources to do it any other way. So we try to respond to those people that tell us information and with the resources we have, we have to prioritize and decide what we can do. The big thing I concentrate on is, as the manager has been the leader to catch up to here is I tell all the Gospels and the members to come here, we are problem solvers. Whatever you do, here to solve a problem. I don't want you out there writing tickets, System Security tickets, there's a purpose to that, we educate the public, that the laws are there for a reason. And if you don't abide by the laws, you're gonna get a ticket, or you're gonna get stopped, and you've been warned, that's a choice that they have, every time they stop an event, they don't have to make them effective. They can warn them, they have to, in your mind, justify to me that whatever they did, is gonna make that person think, okay, do something wrong. Sometimes if somebody's ticketed, just imagine, and though, but I could change the behavior just to be angry. So you're not really helping the situation by reading tickets that way all the time, you can just park for some people doesn't matter what you do the doctor change. So, you know, if you haven't heard other people, you may have worn their seatbelt every day, their license to be forgotten. Now sometimes, if you believe that, then you say, Well, I've already taken you away. Oh, yeah, I will. If you believe you don't have to protect other people you started as well, no, I don't believe in seatbelts, I'm never gonna wear Well, I'm already kicking them because those is telling you, because you're not gonna change your behavior just by me telling you. But whether it's traffic enforcement, whether it's dealing with shoplifters, whether it's dealing with violence in the home, whatever it happens to be, the mandate they have for me is to be a problem solver. We don't want to be Robo cops go in cookie cutter, this falls in this category, we're gonna do A, B, and C, because that's what the book says. Every situation is different. But the nice things about police work, is you get to meet lots of people. And every situation is different. No two scenarios are the same. So they're their mandate is going and problem solve. So assess the situation, figure out what's going on. Now, what's going to be the best resolution? Can we use restorative justice? Because after a court can it be done with a warning isn't needed ticket? All of these are options and different things that they have?

Unknown Speaker 58:00
No, but I think it's for the time will usually stop

Unknown Speaker 58:05
for five minutes or five hours.

Unknown Speaker 58:08
I can also see why

Unknown Speaker 58:10
community spirit and

Unknown Speaker 58:17
how much they appreciate it. Well, I have an announcement at that point. Hopefully today.

Speaker 1 58:25
If not plenty more, we have a calendar coming up. We've produced a calendar we've cooperation with some business people who were raising money for Meals on Wheels, selling the calendars for $10. And all that money is going to support the Meals on Wheels program. And every month has the buffalo on a different day. And in the senators the story of how the buffalo came about and why it was created and how it developed and also what some of our community policing programs so thank you and she loves getting comments and make sure you buy a calendar No, no, it's a calendar with the buffalo different costumes because he's had different fashion every month. We didn't want insulting by having bare chested policemen

Unknown Speaker 59:14
Thank you very much

Unknown Speaker 59:21
there's no tea or coffee please feel free to

Unknown Speaker 59:26
ask any questions I'm not running away

Unknown Speaker 59:38
as a personal professional