Community safety officer program stalled
Required legislative changes could take years, according to city's public safety director
Jessica Davey-Quantick
Northern News Services
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
It might be three years before the city's community safety officer program hits the streets.
In the meantime, city council is debating whether adding more foot patrols to the Municipal Enforcement Division might fill the gap in policing downtown.
City council budgeted $300,000 this year, and is seeking matching funds from the GNWT, to create the program. Modeled after a similar set-up in Thompson, Man., it would include officers trained to point vulnerable people toward social services, shelter, hospital or police cells.
What's throwing a wrench in the plans are required legislative changes at the territorial level, according to city spokesperson Nalini Naidoo.
"The program would require the legislation to allow for a new type of officer, as bylaw officers get their mandate from the Cities, Towns and Villages Act or other municipal enacting legislation," she stated to Yellowknifer.
She added the program in Manitoba also required changes to the provincial policing legislation.
Yellowknife director of public safety Dennis Marchiori estimated it could be April before he receives any response from the GNWT.
"The difficulty is they're in session right now so they're fairly occupied with that," he told Municipal Services Committee on Monday.
He alluded that it could be years before actual movement happens on the program.
"The initial comment they gave to me was that the GNWT has a very full legislative agenda over the next two to three years, so they said it depends on what the priority of this project would be," he said. "I didn't ask for specifics."
Coun. Adrian Bell introduced the program during budget talks in November to mixed reviews from councillors. Both Coun. Niels Konge and Coun. Shauna Morgan expressed hesitation, but Bell stressed the need for the program to address what he called the safety problem in the downtown core.
In the meantime, councillors debated on Monday if additional foot patrols by Municipal Enforcement Division (MED) officers might be a solution.
Coun. Julian Morse said it astounded him there would be such a lag time between now and when the program could begin.
"Part of the problem here I think is that RCMP is tied up doing court services when I believe that they should be tasked with doing law enforcement downtown," he said. "I think that there are some things the city could be doing though ... If we could look at increasing (foot patrols) and just having a better presence of city bylaw enforcement in the downtown."
The Municipal Enforcement Division, made up of a manager, two corporals, six constables, two parking enforcement officers and two clerks are responsible for the administration and enforcement of a number of bylaws, including enforcing the Northwest Territories Motor Vehicles Act. According to statistics presented at the meeting on Monday from the Municipal Enforcement Division, there were 28 library patrols in January, two foot patrols, and four instances where MED officers assisted RCMP. Of the 273 occurrences in January, the top of the list was 71 parking incidents, followed by 36 sidewalk occurrences and 27 incidents involving dogs.
Coun. Niels Konge was skeptical officer foot patrols would do anything at all.
"So more foot patrols, it sounds like a great idea, but my question is what can the MED officers do on these foot patrols? We can't enforce any liquor act violations to the best of my knowledge, we don't have any loitering bylaws to the best of my knowledge," he said.
"I think before you just start throwing people on the street you need to make sure that they actually can do something out there, otherwise I think we're just wasting resources."
Marchiori told council he will look into the idea of adding MED foot patrols and get back to them.
