Penticton Mayor Julius Bloomfield.

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By two key measures, Penticton is the crime capital of the Thompson-Okanagan region and ranks near the worst community for crime in BC.

But Penticton's mayor has plans to change that.

“We’d love to be the city with the biggest reduction in crime (next year),” Mayor Julius Bloomfield told iNFOnews.ca. “That would be a fabulous headline.”

Penticton ranks number one in the region for crimes per 100,000 population at 20,589. That’s the ninth worst in BC.

When it comes to how serious those crimes are, Penticton slips to 15th worst out of 183 communities in BC at 189.4. Only Merritt scores worse on the Crime Severity Index in the Thompson-Okanagan at 219.8, the ninth worst in the province.

“It’s the sad fact of being a small city serving a big area,” Bloomfield said. “2022 was a real benchmark that we want to move away from. Our goal is to obviously get a reduction in those numbers and a continued reduction in those numbers and work very diligently at it.”

He's not taking the same route as Kelowna and blaming tourists for making it the most crime ridden of major metropolitan centres in the country.

READ MORE: Kelowna RCMP hamstrung by justice system that leaves offenders on street

“We get plenty of tourists as well, and crimes do go up, but it’s a different type of crime quite often,” Bloomfield said. “I’ve been here 35 years and I’ve seen the types of tourists have changed dramatically. We don’t get hordes of teenagers and younger folks coming here to party hard like they used to in the 80s and the 90s. I think Kelowna still gets some of that.

“We don’t have a night club in Penticton anymore. We used to have five. Breweries have replaced the nightclubs and the breweries close early. The whole social scene in Penticton has changed.”

That being said, Penticton’s crime problems do trace back to it being a tourist destination in the past.

“When we look at it a little bit deeper we’ve always had a vulnerable population in Penticton simply because of what we have here,” Bloomfield said. “We have a lot of hotels and motels that were very popular is the 60s and 70s. It was a strong tourist destination for families.

“Those small independent motels eventually get run down. They become monthly rentals. They become de facto social housing. So, we’ve had a large vulnerable population in Penticton for decades. Then you bring in a drug supply like fentanyl and meth and benzos now and that vulnerable population suddenly becomes a larger problem due to the types of drugs that are on the street.”.

For 11 out of the last 17 years, Penticton has had the highest crime rate of the Thompson-Okanagan’s five largest cities. For most of the other years in that time span it ranked number two.

READ MORE: Penticton most crime ridden city in Thompson-Okanagan and much of B.C.

So it’s not going to easy to rewrite that history but Penticton is trying, Bloomfield said.

The city drafted a Community Safety Report last year that had about 100 recommendations that are slowly being implemented.

One of those was to train bylaw officers and community safety officers to function as peace officers, which is well underway.

“They can concentrate on dealing with the smaller stuff that builds up to crimes,” Bloomfield said. “That allows the RCMP to do their job as far as the more serious crimes go.”

That training has been embraced by the 27 officers working for the city due, in part, to the fact that a number of them had experience with BC Corrections Service.

“I think a lot of them, obviously, had the training on how to deal with some of the people they have to deal with on the street,” Bloomfield said. “Basically, they’re dealing with the same people, just in a different environment.”

The city also adopted a Safe Public Places bylaw last spring to give those officers more control over things like soliciting, public nudity, public urination and people taking over public spaces.

READ MORE: Penticton council to consider bylaw to govern ‘public behaviour’

Programs like a mobile safe injection site and drug screening have helped reduce overdose deaths in the first half of the year.

More problematic is the core of 20 to 30 people who are living permanently on Penticton streets.

“They’re not allowed in the shelters because they’re so disruptive,” Bloomfield said. “They’re causing a very high percentage of the problems and the crimes. It’s hard to deal with those folks.”

For that, he need help from the province.

“I know that, for the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, that is one of their focuses,” Bloomfield said, noting the minister was in Penticton a couple of weeks ago. “They’re acutely aware of the situation. They’re working away trying to do something about it but, of course, they’re reactionary rather than proactive at the moment.”

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