Vernon RCMP detachment

(CHARLOTTE HELSTON / iNFOnews.ca)

Vernon City Council is going to decide whether to give Vernon RCMP $220,000 for more support staff because of significant backlogs.

In 2023 Vernon RCMP recognized the need for more support staff and were able to hire officers on temporary contracts, but commanding officers think these support positions are still needed, according to a report from Vernon RCMP’ general manager.

The report is going to be presented to council at tomorrow’s regular meeting.

This money would pay for three roles for a year, and the funds would come from the RCMP Contingency Reserve which currently has $1,562,934, according to the report.

Part of the money would go to a court liaison officer and an exhibit custodian, each role would cost a total of roughly $44,000. A court liaison officer acts as a bridge between the police and the prosecution. The exhibit custodian organizes and oversees the storage of evidence and seized property.

The report said the temporary roles which began in 2023 have been effective at reducing the amount of backlogged files, but still, there are a significant amount of files to catch up on.

The temporary exhibit custodian’s contract ended in December of 2023, and now there is a backlog of 487 files for the remaining exhibit custodian to handle.

“The exhibit custodian is again having to forgo quality assurance work as there is no capacity to complete all of the required tasks,” the report said.

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The temporary court liaison has managed to reduce the backlog from 2420 files to 1000 files, but their contract expires at the end of the month.  

The majority of the money, roughly $130,000, would be for a crime analyst.

“The crime analyst collects, analyses and interprets investigative and intelligence data to support investigations, community policing and crime prevention strategies and operational plans. They liaise with external agencies and government departments such as the Corrections Service of Canada, Community Corrections as well as other police agencies,” the report said.

The report compared the RCMP support staff situation in Vernon to the amount of support staff in Kelowna. Kelowna’s RCMP detachment is about four times the size of Vernon’s and the report said there is a prepared business case for Kelowna to add four crime analysts divided between the municipal detachment and regional detachment.

If Kelowna were to hire four more crime analysts at the same rate as Vernon it would cost roughly $520,000 a year.

Click here to see the full report.

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