Community policing volunteers start courier service, tackle graffiti

Transporting police documents between local RCMP detachments frees up officers for more important duties

Community policing volunteers in West Kelowna have started a courier service.

The volunteers transport police and legal documents every weekday between the RCMP detachments in West Kelowna and Kelowna.

That frees up RCMP members, who previously had transported the documents, to tend to more important police work, city council heard this week.

“A courier service — that’s very creative on someone’s part,” Coun. Rusty Ensign said after hearing a presentation from community policing spokesman Dave Scruton.

Other new tasks undertaken this year by the community policing volunteers include checking boats for invasive quagga and zebra mussels and eradicating graffiti.

“We carry a small supply of suitable cleaning products,” Scuton said, adding, however, the members had to be careful with their scrubbing or they might, for example, remove the letters from a Stop sign.

The members have been particularly busy on the graffiti front, removing the mysterious message “Free Westbank” that has been appearing with great regularity on lampposts, bridge overpasses and utility boxes.

“It’s a real shame we have to deal with that,” Mayor Doug Findlater told Scruton.

Other services provided by the volunteers include checking vehicle licence plates for stolen cars, conducting speed checks on busy roads, providing fraudawareness programs and conducting general patrols to watch for any suspicious activity that can be reported to police.

In past years, the volunteers have also handed out tickets for parking infractions and done ride-alongs with RCMP. However, because of legal concerns about liability, those more hands-on duties are no longer permitted.

The loss of those activities, council heard, sparked the volunteers to undertake the courier service and other new initiatives. The members now have an infra-red camera that can determine the temperature inside a locked vehicle where a child or dog might have been left, council heard.

“Our volunteers are anxious to do more that will benefit our community,” Scruton said.