Public Safety committee  It's not a released document yet because it is a work in progress with a private company. I certainly would not want to withhold from you information that would be helpful to your work, so I would like to find a way to get at least something to you, if that's something that interests you.

Public Safety committee  We did a survey last year.... Now, you need to understand this is a community that was seeing a gang crisis in front of them. They were seeing gangsters shot on the street. So for them to see the turnaround in relation to that.... We did a survey last year and our approval rating was extremely high, well over 90%.

Public Safety committee  Well, we have over doubled the drop in crime in the rest of B.C. during this timeframe. I would suggest that no change in demographics would account for something like that. I am a student of Bratton from New York. I believe a police force can make a community safe. We came in and said that we would make Abbotsford the safest city in B.C.

Public Safety committee  Right. Well, police managers always have to manage cost along with our primary objective, which is to keep the community safe. The two of them are always the intention. Our belief is that if we create this branch and do this right, we will actually increase the amount of proactive time that the people who are not in this branch have to drive crime down further.

Public Safety committee  Absolutely. It's huge. The night before last, we had officers tied up with seven apprehensions under the Mental Health Act. It basically ate almost all our resources for the entire night. That happens on a frequent basis. It is its own separate problem to be addressed, and it is certainly not something I'm....

Public Safety committee  Yes. Our hospital and several other hospitals in B.C. struggle with how many hours it takes before they take them off our hands, absolutely.

Public Safety committee  Yes, I completely agree. It has to do with the technologies we employ, and it has to do with a more complex response that society wants from police and a more detailed response for court processes.

Public Safety committee  You can phone a non-emergency number. It is being handled by the same call centre. We're actually the only police force in North America that has two-way texting as well. You can also text our police force and we will text you back and have a conversation that way as well. So there are a few ways to communicate with us.

Public Safety committee  That's a good question. Vancouver responds to break and enters in the way you describe. I would say that Vancouver has not gone as wholesale as we're about to do, in relation to priorities three and four. That's not completely fair because in the last little while, Vancouver has hired 40 community safety officers as an efficiency and are responding to more of those calls that way.

Public Safety committee  When KPMG made the comment, it referred to quantitative measures, to how hard somebody is working as opposed to how well somebody is working. We are looking at both factors when it comes to performance management. KPMG said, “You have officers who are just doing the minimum and you need to get more from them.”

Public Safety committee  An officer who is not working as hard as others might be somebody who answers the radio and takes the calls they are given. So they are doing a good job of reacting when they are asked to do things, but in fact in an organization such as ours, which does so much proactive work, members who are performing well show tremendous personal initiative.

Public Safety committee  There are two things. One is that for a new policing unit, instead of simply staffing it with police officers, we will look at staffing it with persons who are not as expensive as police officers, so we'll have a mixed team. There would be cost savings there. The other thing is that what we are doing and what we have committed to our community is that as our community is growing, we are not growing.

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. That was the end of my presentation. All I was going to say was that what I'm pitching to you has yet to be seen, because we haven't done this yet. We'll see if it actually works.

Public Safety committee  I do. Thank you. I appreciate the invitation to appear before your committee, sir. I would like to talk for a couple of minutes about what we are trying to accomplish in Abbotsford on the topic of police efficiencies. Just to give you a sense of what kind of department it is, so that my comments will make sense as I go forward, Abbotsford's is a municipal department of about 210 police officers, 300 employees in all.

Public Safety committee  If I were picking between the two, I would put my money into who gets a licence. To me that's the biggest single issue, as well as aggressively reviewing whether people have become unstable or involved in domestic violence or are mentally ill. It's all of those issues. That's where I would put my money.