POLICE EYE GAME PLAN TO TACKLE TOP PRIORITIES

Drugs, crime prevention, youth issues, communication with the
community and police visibility were among the high priorities set
out by city council during a strategic planning session with RCMP
members Thursday.

Now it's up to the police to come up with strategies to deal with those issues.

City council met with Supt. Jim Begley and other RCMP officers for
two and a half hours Thursday to talk about creating a five-year
vision for policing in Kamloops.

What they came up with was a loose list of priorities, which Begley
said he'll take and incorporate with comments from a public forum
held last spring along with points raised at focus groups last month.

The end result, he said, should be a draft strategic plan that will
go back to city council via the police committee. Specific action
plans will also follow, but some of them won't be released publicly
because they will involve police investigations.

"It's realigning the priorities," he said.

Mayor Terry Lake said the strategic planning exercise is also about
building relationships between the city and the RCMP.

"The solution is working together, engaging the community and working
with the resources we have," he said.

"I didn't expect to come out of here with a magic bullet."

And there was no magic bullet. But there was a list of council's
general priorities and an idea that Begley would be able to use that
to set direction for his detachment.

"For me, it's about setting a five-year course," Begley said.

RCMP statistician Cpl. Sharon McWilliam outlined crime trends in the
city. In the past five years, there have been rises in violent crimes
- -- assaults, robberies, sexual assaults; and in disturbances (often
involving alcohol or drugs), and in drug-related busts. In fact, she
said, Kamloops saw more seizures in cocaine in 2005 than Prince
George or the North Okanagan.

Organized crime has also arisen in the city, even resulting in one
auto-theft investigation that went national, she said.

"None of this is to alarm anybody," Begley cautioned, noting the
information and numbers that McWilliam gave out were to paint a
picture of what's going on in the community.

"This is not about resourcing. This is about making the most of what
we've got."

Coun. Tina Lange said as a downtown business owner, she has seen how
safety is a perception. People walking along Victoria Street don't
feel safe when they see panhandlers and riff raff, but they are
reassured when they see an officer on foot patrol.

Coun. Pat Wallace said while it would be nice to have more officers
out on foot patrols and responding to stolen bike calls, it isn't
realistic given the number of RCMP members here.

"We have to take responsibility for ourselves," she said. "If it
comes to looking after serious crime and visibility, I'll take the
serious crime."

McWilliam said a lot of property crime is preventable, and a
partnership with community policing and the media could help get the
word out on ways to be less vulnerable.

While several people mentioned youth as a priority, defining what the
police could do was tougher to pin down.

Lange suggested the police, city, schools, health and other
departments get together to come up with a way of making Kamloops a
leader in helping youth.

"Let's be the benchmark in Canada for drug prevention for kids," she said.

Lake said he was initially excited about Lange's idea, but after some
discussion wondered if it might be too big an issue to tackle at the
local level.