In Duncan, RCMP officers are running from call to call, scrambling to keep up and letting the proactive policing that can prevent crime fall by the wayside.
In Sooke, the detachment commander routinely calls in Mounties on overtime, including from other detachments, as well as reserve constables just to avoid falling below minimum staffing levels.
These are scenarios reflected in internal RCMP documents that show one in 10 Mountie positions in B.C. are vacant. Staffing shortages are even higher due to officers off work on extended leave.
The shortage of Mounties has been a long-running concern for the province and the municipalities that contract with the RCMP and pay up to 90 per cent of policing costs.
In a 2007 report, Toronto lawyer David Brown warned of systemic vacancies caused by budget constraints that prevent the RCMP from recruiting and training new cadets.
"The force continues to meet its commitments only because its members are prepared to work too long and too hard to compensate for the lack of resources," he wrote.
An October 2011 RCMP management report, obtained by the Times Colonist, shows that many RCMP detachments in B.C. remain chronically understaffed more than four years later.
One of Brown's key recommendations was that the RCMP should not commit to delivering a new service if it will compromise the force's existing responsibilities.
Yet the Mounties pursued the contract to police the Town of Esquimalt, promising 35 officers and a stand-alone detachment for the municipality, which has a population of 17,000 in an area of seven square kilometres.
While Esquimalt council last year chose the RCMP bid over one from the Victoria police, the final decision rests with B.C. Solicitor General Shirley Bond.
Recently elected Esquimalt Coun. David Hodgins, an emergency services consultant and former fire commissioner, said the RCMP does a great job when fully staffed. But given the 17 per cent total vacancy on Vancouver Island, he's not convinced that will be the case.
"As I said from the onset when Esquimalt released their recommendation [endorsing the RCMP] . will they, in fact, be resourced? Will they have the staffing complements to meet the needs?"
Chief Supt. Kevin DeBruyckere, in charge of career development and resourcing for the RCMP in B.C., said he doesn't see systemic vacancies that would prevent the force from entering into a contract with a municipality the size of Esquimalt.
Liberal Senator Colin Kenny said the RCMP has a problem over-committing to new initiatives for municipal and provincial contracts by depleting its federal resources.
"You're robbing Peter to pay Paul," he said.
RCMP detachments typically have much higher vacancy rates than municipal departments and also have fewer officers per capita than their municipal counterparts.
For example, the West Shore and Sooke RCMP detachments have just over 1,000 people for every officer, compared with the 413 residents per officer in Victoria and 760 in Saanich.
The Victoria and Saanich municipal police departments, with 243 and 154 officers respectively, say they rarely have more than a handful of positions vacant, and they always have a plan to back-fill or hire new recruits when members retire or go on extended leave.
"The consequences for public safety are you have overworked, regular members of the RCMP who are trying to do the job with far fewer numbers than you would see in other B.C.
[municipal] departments," Kenny said.
DeBruyckere could not say if vacancy rates have gone up or down in recent years. Anecdotally, detachment commanders on the Lower Island say the situation has improved from a few years ago when there was a huge wave of retirements.
DeBruyckere acknowledged the situation can be hard on officers, particularly when there is a delay in filling vacant positions while waiting for Mounties to transfer from other detachments or for new recruits to be trained.
"I know some detachments, we're asking a lot of our members who are doing that work," DeBruyckere said.
O n Jan. 9, around 3: 30 p.m., Sooke RCMP got a frantic, broken call from a mobile home park on Otter Point Road. It was a Sunday and three of the detachment's 15 officers were working.
They all went to the scene and quickly realized they were dealing with a homicide.
One officer arrested the suspect, one talked to witnesses and one secured the scene by himself. The Vancouver Island Integrated Major Crime Unit was called to handle the investigation.
Detachment commander Staff Sgt. Steve Wright came into work, called in the two night-shift officers early to provide scene security and brought in two members on their day off to police the rest of the community.
For the next few days, Mounties from the West Shore, Duncan and Sidney were brought in on overtime to assist in the investigation.
"Because it was just too much for our detachment to handle, I was concerned we'd burn out our resources," Wright said in an interview.
It's the type of juggling of resources that is not uncommon for thinly stretched RCMP detachments in less-populated areas such as Sooke, the Gulf Islands and even North Cowichan-Duncan.
Wright said in his two years in Sooke, there have only been two months when all 15 officers were on the road.
Two officers are always on patrol in Sooke - three on weekend nights - to cover a sprawling area that extends all the way from Metchosin to Port Renfrew. Off-duty officers have to be called in whenever there's a call in Port Renfrew to cover the two officers making the hour-and-a-half drive.
The detachment will often call in reserve constables, retired officers who volunteer to be on call when the staffing situation is particularly dire.
"It's not a major fix but it's a short-term measure that helps us out considerably," Wright said.
It's cheaper than calling in an officer on overtime and prevents burning out the regular members, he said.
Insp. Kevin Hewco, commanding officer of North Cowichan-Duncan RCMP, said the tight resources mean his officers spend their shifts just trying to keep up with calls, rather than practising proactive policing.
"We're missing stuff, that's fair to say," he said. "We're reacting once crime has occurred, rather than being proactive to deal with it."
Hewco said it is nearly impossible to predict when the busy times will be, because sometimes 3 a.m. on a Monday is busier than a weekend night.
"We are stretched thin many times, that I can attest to," Hewco said.
The October RCMP staffing report shows that just over half of
the 749 vacant positions in B.C. are in the process of being filled. A third of the positions are held vacant because of a lack of funding.
The province was well aware of the staffing concerns before signing a tentative 20-year contract with the RCMP in November.
A recent audit by the province's police services division that looked at vacancy rates was never publicly released despite calls from opposition MLAs and the media.
B.C.'s director of police services, Clayton Pecknold, was not available for an interview. A spokeswoman for the Public Safety Ministry said the province is aware of staffing shortages in the RCMP and said it is up to local detachment commanders to address the shortfalls with their mayors.
Kathy Corrigan, the NDP critic for the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, said municipalities have been concerned about unmanned positions for years. "I would hope and assume it was a priority for the province to address this longstanding and wellknown problem during the contract negotiations," Corrigan said.
Langley Mayor Peter Fassbender, who was observing the RCMP contract talks on behalf of the province's mayors, said he is confident the new agreement will force the RCMP to be more transparent about its vacancy rates and more responsive to mayors who want their community policed at full strength.
Kenny said it's a matter of better planning, to predict a certain number of officers who are going to be sick, or have babies or get injured.
The catch, he said, is that it will cost more money.
"Because the federal government is cutting back, we're going to see the RCMP shrink in numbers rather than grow."
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