Rutland officers help slow crime downtown

Thefts from vehicles surged early this year, but the arrest of some prolific offenders put the brakes on the crime spree.

Between Jan. 1 and Feb. 11, reports of items being stolen from cars and trucks rose 120 per cent over the same period last year, Kelowna city council heard Monday.

Police responded to the crime wave by re-deploying officers from Rutland to downtown Kelowna and conducting more street patrols, RCMP Supt. Brent Mundle said. After some particularly prolific offenders were arrested, only two thefts from vehicles have been reported between Feb. 10 and this past weekend, council heard.

Mundle cited the experience as evidence of the way the allocation of police resources and re-assessment of priorities can make a difference in the crime rate. Property offences, violent crimes, and other Criminal Code offences are trending down in Kelowna, Mundle said.

“Overall, we saw decreases in all three areas in 2017 compared to 2016,” Mundle said.

Kelowna’s crime rate is currently below that of comparable cities such as Kamloops and Penticton, council heard. “We’re performing very well compared to some of the other communities on a population basis,” Mundle said.

In the past year, he said, Kelowna RCMP also had success in catching more shoplifters from local stores, laid more than 100 drug-trafficking charges downtown and charged an average of one person a day with distracted driving.

Some drug traffickers are getting sentences of seven months in jail, while those convicted of dealing fentanyl have received sentences of two years, Mundle said. Under a program that pairs an RCMP officer with a mental-health nurse, 64 people who would otherwise have been admitted to Kelowna General Hospital were instead diverted to other community resources. That meant officers spent about 100 hours less waiting at KGH.

Members of an organized crime group in Kelowna are currently the subject of a police investigation, Mundle said, with quantities of fentanyl and methamphetamine having been seized. He promised more information on that file soon.

A citizen survey last year found 20 per cent of Kelowna residents believe downtown is unsafe, Mayor Colin Basran noted as he asked Mundle to comment on that finding.

Violent crime has been declining for the past five years, Mundle responded, but he acknowledged the sight of many homeless people, and encounters with panhandlers, may be unnerving.

Still, Mundle suggested people could be “more empathetic” to the homeless population.