Lake Country wants to bolster the rank
District staff planning to ask Victoria for a 13th Mountie before it’s too late
The police force in Lake Country should be increased before crime rates shoot up, town council will hear next week.
Municipal staff recommend council bolster the RCMP detachment by one member, bringing the complement up to 13.
"There is no hard or defined rules for the level of RCMP service in relation to population, however a general rule of one member be 1,000 of population has been used," municipal finance officer Tanya Garost writes in a report to council.
"Given (Lake Country's) population at the last census of 12,922, under the general rule it is time to add another RCMP member," Garost writes.
"Members should be added before warning signals appear, such as growth in crime rates," she writes.
Lake Country taxpayers cover 70 per cent of policing costs in the town, with the provincial and federal governments providing the balance. The annual cost of one RCMP officer is $175,000.
Staff's recommendation to council is that Mayor James Baker write a letter to Victoria and Ottawa by the end of April, asking for authorization to proceed with hiring a 13th member for the detachment. Given the length of time between budget approval and actual deployment of an RCMP officer, it's not expected the new recruit would arrive in Lake Country until the summer of 2019.
In 2010, when Lake Country had a population of 10,550, the town was ranked 123rd among the 238 Canadian communities with populations over 10,000 in terms of its overall crime rate, Statistics Canada reported.
Between 2015 and 2016, total RCMP files in Lake Country rose 1.5 per cent, the 2016 town report states.