Terrace city council thinks it has found a way to add more RCMP officers to the understaffed detachment here.
And that’s to increase, on paper, the number of officers needed to meet the detachment’s needs.
Right now the city has approved of 28 officers but with the RCMP only staffing at 75 per cent of that figure because of a nation-wide officer shortage, the actual number of officers hovers between 21 and 22.
By increasing the approved strength to 31 officers, council hopes to have 25 members on duty, a figure considered sufficient.
The staffing plan was first presented to council by detachment commander Staff Sergeant Terry Gillespie who said the officer shortage is leading to increased stress and burn out by the remaining members.
In a five-page detailed memo to council, Gillespie said a high-level RCMP managerial review this spring noted “external clients had a shared opinion that the detachment was in desperate need for increased resources due to the file load and their inability to provide community-based enhanced policing.”
Based on a six-year average of RCMP statistics, Gillespie said Terrace has a crime rate of 238 offences per 1,000 residents — far higher than the provincial average of 93.
The case load per officer is also higher —113 cases compared to the provincial average of 67.
“Presently the high workload is causing burn out amongst members at the detachment. As detachment members become off-duty sick, this increases the workload on remaining members, which leads to further burnout and creates a cycle,” Gillespie wrote.
“As the detachment is operating at or above its capacity at all times, the detachment is unable to cope or adapt to circumstances such as reduced recruiting, emergency situations, unexpected sick leave, new emergent crime trends and the expectation of increased cooperating with partner agencies in the community.”
The officer shortage has meant that officers in specialized positions have been shifted to general duty and other higher priority areas.
That includes shelving the detachment’s three-person crime reduction unit and, with that, the ability of the detachment to focus in on repeat violent offenders.
That’s a crucial situation because the province has chosen Terrace as its northwest hub to concentrate on repeat violent offenders. It has assigned a special Crown counsel and has hired probation officers but additional RCMP officers are also needed.
Terrace is one of a dozen violent offender hubs created this spring by the provincial government in a highly-publicized response to rising crime rates and public safety concerns around the province.
Gillespie also compared nearby Prince Rupert which has 36 approved officers to Terrace’s approved 28 officers.
“As a result, Prince Rupert’s reported case load is a much more manageable 56 criminal code file per member per year,” he wrote.
Gillespie said adding more officers would increase the police presence in high crime areas, increase the perception of safety among residents and make the detachment more attractive to officers considering a move to Terrace.
But adding officers will also cost local taxpayers who pay 70 per cent of the cost of each officer assigned to the city budget.
A regular member now costs $231,302 a year and local taxpayers are responsible for $161,911 of that sum, meaning that the price tag for three officers is $485,733.
The positions financed by city taxpayers are general duty ones and do not include officers assigned to major crimes, narcotics or the highway patrol, for instance.