'SKYCOPS' BID FACING EXTINCTION

Almost 18 months after a special police unit was announced for the
SkyTrain line, the initiative remains stalled and could get axed as
soon as next month.

B.C. Solicitor General Rich Coleman told The Leader last week that the
province will provide no money for the program, putting the funding
burden on the cash-strapped TransLink and its member
municipalities.

"It's not a provincial responsibility," said Coleman, adding that
cities have gained investment from hosting the SkyTrain line.

"They shouldn't take the attitude of reaping the benefits, but not
paying for the enforcement."

Questions about funding, and how the new unit would be organized, have
plagued the initiative since it was announced by the former NDP
government in July 2000.

Responding to complaints about drug dealing on and around SkyTrain,
the plan was for an armed force using officers seconded from
detachments along the line.

But neither the province nor TransLink, the transportation authority
responsible for SkyTrain, has ever committed any funding to the
project. Larry Ward, president of TransLink's SkyTrain subsidiary,
said the bid is still alive, although he allowed that the authority's
financial woes will make it difficult without provincial help.

It would cost roughly $100,000 per officer, he said, with a force size
between eight and 16 members.

"It would have to be our decision to proceed, competing with all the
other things people want funded," said Ward, adding: "The priority
seems to have gone off of this."

Ward said TransLink's mayors and councillors will get a chance to
decide the program's fate, possibly as soon as December. The options
will be proceeding, seeking expanded police powers for the existing
security-constable unit, or pulling the plug.

TransLink board member Helen Sparkes, mayor of New Westminster, said
she supports moving ahead with SkyTrain police in some form.

New West is about to get two new SkyTrain stations, and her city
police force is already stretched thin dealing with crime at the
existing stations, she said.

"Something has to happen," Sparkes said. "The status quo is not
acceptable."