Top cop stands by ‘housing first’ strategy

Penticton’s top cop says his officers are looking for proactive solutions to chronic social problems they believe are linked to property crimes.

At Tuesday’s city council meeting, Supt. Ted De Jager stated police are looking at treatment, rather than arrest, as a way to address the lifestyle of prolific offenders.

“We will not be able to enforce our way out of homelessness,” he said, arguing instead that police want to help address “the root causes of why those people are there to begin with.”

When asked by Mayor Andrew Jakubeit how the RCMP is responding to personal property crime, De Jager stated that trying to move the problem along won’t resolve it, as many offenders reside in Penticton and refuse to move. One major issue, he said, is lack of housing. “We definitely have a concern with social chronic behaviour that we need to continue to solve. We’re trying to help the people involved in that issue and . . . housing is going to be an absolute part of that,” said De Jager.

“It doesn’t mean they're going to stop that (criminal) behaviour but it does mean that they will be . . . looking for solutions towards that.” That’s the basis of the community’s “housing first” philosophy. Jakubeit asked De Jager to elaborate on how the RCMP is targeting “inappropriate behaviour,” such as drinking in public, and their consistency in taking steps towards resolving it.

Speaking in hypothetical terms, De Jager used public drinking by the homeless as an example that creates a perception of an unsafe community. By housing these individuals, the drinking can then take place inside and out of sight of the community. Treatment would follow. That’s the essence of the local “housing first” philosophy.

De Jager went on to present statistics that showed property crime remained static through the first eight months of 2018 versus the year-ago period.

Violent crime was up 33 per cent through the first eight months of the year, however, De Jager noted such calls represent only about two per cent of police files.

He was pleased to note that auto theft was down 30 per cent in Penticton through August.