Public Safety Committee on Nov. 19th, 2013

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

I don't know the Abbotsford, B.C., region very well. I am from eastern Quebec. So we are from opposite ends of the country.

Are street gangs a problem in Abbotsford? If so, how do you manage that situation?

[C/Cst Bob Rich]

Our gangs are not like street gangs, in the sense that they don't stand on the corner. Because Abbotsford for a period of time allowed a lot of marijuana grow operations to occur—all through the valley there were many grow operations for marijuana—the young gangs made a tremendous amount of money doing that and got into the world of importing cocaine and weapons and became very violent in the valley.

We have managed that by doing a lot of education in the schools about joining gangs. I have been to every high school and every middle school in my community to speak to kids about gangs. We have done a tremendous number of videos, for example, about even how to parent your kids so they don't end up in gangs.

On the enforcement side, we are a very small police department, but we have created a gang squad. We have gone after gangs in a very aggressive way, as far as arresting them. We probably arrest 40 members of gangs per year, which is a lot for a very small community. So by a combination of—

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you, Chief Rich.

We have exhausted our time on that line of questioning. As a matter of fact, we are substantially over the time, but that's fine.

Now for the last question, please, Mr. Payne.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Chief Rich, for coming and for your very interesting presentation.

I want to follow up a bit on the mental health issue. We have seen other communities where they have people on standby; I don't know if that happens in Abbotsford. You did talk about one evening where I think you said you had almost your whole police force managing seven mental health cases.

Do the B.C. health services have somebody available on standby? Are they 24 hours a day, or is it just from 9 to 5?

[C/Cst Bob Rich]

No. The hospital is a very robust, large hospital in Abbotsford. They have psychiatric nurses and doctors 24/7. But this is the same problem that other police jurisdictions face. When you get to the hospital with a person you've apprehended, that is not a crisis for the hospital. That person is in the custody of two capable police officers, so the hospital, as they triage cases, can move on to other things. They don't need to make that case a priority, which I understand, but it creates a problem for us because it's using resources.

Just quickly, because this story brings it out quite a bit, one of the people they apprehended that night had ingested pesticides. In fact, his body began to exude fumes, to the point where they had to declare they had a crisis in the hospital. They had to shut down the entire emergency area of the hospital. We had to send many of those people to other hospitals.

These are real crises for the hospitals as well. I get that this is not easy for them to handle either. Handling mental health issues in the emergency area of a hospital is not an efficient place for them either.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

If you're a community officer or a mental health officer, are there any issues around the privacy aspects? We've heard that from some of the communities, but those issues have been resolved just by the police force and the other organizations insisting that it's going to happen, so make sure that all legal aspects have been completed.... I'm just wondering how that sits with your organization.

[C/Cst Bob Rich]

The fact that you have a police officer meeting informally with people is probably the single best resolution to that problem. What's odd is that the computer systems that exist across Canada for police sometimes have more mental health information on some people than the health systems do, because they are discrete and separate, and we are able to communicate with each other.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

I have just a few more questions.

In terms of your priority one and priority two, what is your response time, and how does that compare with other police organizations across the country?

[C/Cst Bob Rich]

Abbotsford is 140 square miles, unfortunately—sorry, but I don't do kilometres—so it's a large community, and our response times are in the area of 11 minutes, unfortunately. I would wish them to be in the area of seven minutes, but part of that simply is dealing with a large geographical area.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Chief Rich, you also talked about holding the line with your officers versus the population increase. How does your officer ratio compare with those of other communities across the country? Do you have any numbers on that?

[C/Cst Bob Rich]

We are at one police officer for 628 citizens right now. That is somewhat in the middle in British Columbia. If you were in a Mountie jurisdiction in British Columbia, you would have perhaps a slightly higher ratio. If you were in Vancouver, it would be one officer to 500, for example. It depends on which community you're comparing us to.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

You have another minute.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you.

You did talk about having two separate numbers for calls. I'm assuming that you have your 911 number, plus one where you can report other incidents. How is that communicated to the community? Are there some difficulties in terms of transferring those issues from one section to another?

[C/Cst Bob Rich]

Yes, it's always been an issue for police that people use 911 when they shouldn't and sometimes use a non-emergency line when they should be using 911.

It's on our website. We communicate it a lot through social media. We talk with the community around this, with the odd story from time to time about when you should phone 911 and when you should use our non-emergency line. We have very proactive community newspapers that will print those kinds of stories for us.

We're doing relatively well in that, but it's always an area of confusion. You'll have people who phone 911 and ask you what the correct time is. It has always been a struggle. Some people will abuse these things.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Your time is exhausted.

The chair has one brief question that he would like to introduce at this particular point.

Obviously, police officers in uniform or full staff have accountability mechanisms in place for their reporting. I'm just wondering about the accountability mechanisms you have in place for the civilians who you employ and/or the community safety officers. What level of accountability structure would you have for them, and is it any different from that for your uniformed officers?

[C/Cst Bob Rich]

One of the things to understand about accountability for police officers who are out on the street on patrol is that they have tremendous autonomy. They are out on the road by themselves with nobody watching. In a sense, the community is watching, but they are out there working on their own for the most part.

The accountability systems you have for your civilians involve supervision that is actually physically proximate. You are able to see what they're doing. We have performance appraisals, we have the supervisors who are watching the work of the people who are working inside our buildings, and in a relative sense, that is simple compared to the issues you have in trying to ensure accountability for people who have tremendous autonomy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Mr. Rich, our time, of course, has now come to a close.

The chair, on behalf of this entire committee, would certainly like to thank you for taking your time and giving us the benefit of your extensive knowledge, the history involved with policing, and the protection, of course, for the public's safety. Thank you again for coming here. Thank you for taking the time to video conference today, and certainly I can assure you your comments will be taken under serious consideration by this committee.

Have yourself a good day, sir.

[C/Cst Bob Rich]

Thank you for your work.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Okay, colleagues, at this particular time we will go to future business, so we will break for a moment while we go in camera.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

[Inaudible—Editor]...in camera to debate motions. This is a new policy that's evolved over the last four years. It's a policy of secrecy that I just can't understand and entirely disagree with. The public should know what we do in motions, who votes which way, and why.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

I'll respond to that Mr. Easter.

I couldn't agree with you more. I have no challenge with not going in camera, but in this particular case the motion certainly applies to the calling of witnesses, and the calling of witnesses, of course, is an issue that is predominately the issue of future business. That's why the chair has declared, for this particular motion, that this be an issue of future business.

Thank you.

[Proceedings continue in camera]