Kelowna RCMP Supt. Kara Triance.

(CARLI BERRY / iNFOnews.ca)

As a national police force, the RCMP has taken some hits in terms of its misogynistic and homophobic attitudes.

The Kelowna detachment, the second largest in Canada, has also been criticized for things like how it dealt with unfounded sexual assault claims, violent arrests and wellness checks that turned ugly.

READ MORE: Assault charge approved against Kelowna RCMP officer for violent wellness check

That means, when Supt. Kara Triance took over as officer in charge of the detachment just over a year ago, she had her job cut out for her in terms of changing the culture within her detachment and the public perception of that culture.

“The RCMP has been impacted by a lot of serious incidents as well as lawsuits against the RCMP,” Triance said in an interview with iNFOnews.ca. “Culturally, we’ve taken some knocks to the chin. There’s no doubt. That shakes your foundation as an organization. What’s really important is that we look internally at what we have, at our strengths, and focus on refining those processes that help us be better and healthier as police officers and police culture.”

READ MORE: Major changes needed to rid RCMP of toxic culture: independent report

Last June, Supt. Brent Mundle was transferred to Southeast Division, shortly after a video of a violent arrest by one of his officers came to light.

Kelowna Mayor Colin Basran said, at the time, that Mundle had city council’s full support and the transfer did not relate to events at the attachment.

READ MORE: Kelowna RCMP superintendent transfers to new role

Last month, Triance apologized for a police officer who, under Mundle's watch in 2019, shrugged off a woman who claimed she was raped.

Charges are now being recommended by the RCMP against the assailant.

READ MORE: Kelowna's top cop apologizes for mishandled sexual assault complaint

While she refused, in the interview, to point fingers at her predecessors, Triance made it clear from the start of her job that changing the culture was one of her top priorities.

“Are there people within the organization that come from that stereotypical militaristic culture or family values, absolutely,” she said. “But I don’t want to paint with that brush. I think we have done a very good job socially and culturally painting the brush of the RCMP being very militaristic.

“I have worked with so many individuals who are strong leaders and mentors who fall into the history of having come from the military and who are male who are phenomenal change leaders. I would like to break down the stereotypes and say, what we need to do, internally, is address those who fall into those stereotypical norms and are behaving that way and uplift them.”

Rather than focus on cultural stereotypes or past problems, Triance stressed the need to address growing pains within the detachment.

“Kelowna detachment grew rapidly,” she said. “It’s one of the fastest growing cities in Canada right now and it has not evolved its work process and it has not evolved in its administrational and operative support. It is about processes that need to be refined behind the scenes, this is not the stuff that the public would necessarily see.”

With Surrey in the process of converting to a municipal force, Kelowna is now the second largest RCMP detachment in Canada, behind Burnaby, which has about 300 members. That means simple things like keeping files organized and accessible.

“They seem like small factors but the layers of a significant number of small changes add up to monumental effects in the long run in times savings and efficiencies and the ability to work faster through the workload that we have,” she said.

That’s a process that’s going to take another two or three years and won’t show results overnight, but Triance hopes her quarterly reports to city council will start showing things like shorter response times.

While the Kelowna RCMP detachment is extremely busy and case loads are high, Triance refused to give an optimum number of officers needed today to serve the city.

There are currently 210 officers with eight more coming over the next couple of months and 11 budgeted to arrive in 2023.

READ MORE: Why it can take over a year to hire a new RCMP officer in Okanagan, Kamloops

Picking an optimum size depends on the type of police force the city wants.

“I think our cop-to-pop(ulation) ratio should really be down in the 1 to 500 range,” Triance said. “It really depends on what you want to see from your police force so this becomes a community decision. If you want to see no-call-too-small and police officers engaged at every level of community policing and youth education and proactive measures, you’re going to need to staff at levels of 1 to 300, 1 to 400.

“If you’re comfortable with the fact the police are able to get to a 911 call within seven minutes and that they are healthy and well and ready to responds to calls for services, probably about 1 to 400, 1 to 500 will get you there.

“If you’re OK with a slightly longer wait time when you call the police station and all the trickle effects of how well your file is investigated based on reasonable case load and work load, then you’re looking at the 1 to 700, 1 to 800 ratio and, of course, balancing that with crime rates, crime severity and other things that might impact it, such as the fact Kelowna has a large hospital, has a large airport and is the centre of services. All of those things drive the change of the number of officers in a police station.”

The ratio is now close to 1 to 700.

To get to a ratio of 1 to 500 would require about 70 more police officers than are currently on the books. At a cost to the city of $203,000 per officer, that would add about $14 million to the city’s budget.

Triance has also called for help from the province in freeing up police officers from having to deal with the large number of calls with mental health components.

READ MORE: Kelowna RCMP calls on province for help handling mental health calls

That, combined with a more efficient administration system, may slow the demand for more boots on the ground.

In the meantime, she is pushing for each police officer to show up at their best when responding to calls.

“When I talk about transformational culture, when I talk about workplace culture and change, it’s about health and wellness and making sure my police officers are equipped and ready for duty and that they have looked and we have looked internally at what has got us to the place where we needed to vision change and we needed to rebuild our relationship with our community and what really shook our roots in the first place,” Triance said.

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