Council sticks with RCMP, but wants answers

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Moncton city council voted Monday to approve a consultant’s report that recommends the city keep the Codiac Regional RCMP and not move to a new regional police force, but councillors still want answers and more discussion on the future of policing and public safety.

Council spent a large portion of Monday’s committee-of-the-whole session discussing the report by consultants Perivale and Taylor, which was first presented to the city last October. That report looked at policing and recommended that Moncton, Riverview and Dieppe continue with the Codiac Regional RCMP. Dieppe and Riverview have voted to accept the report, while Moncton set up a committee of councillors Daniel Bourgeois, Bryan Butler and Charles Leger to look for more information and answer questions. That committee’s report was presented to council Monday.

The committee said it had obtained answers to 50 of the 53 outstanding questions, but one of the main items – a workload analysis of the RCMP officers in Moncton – has not been completed. The analysis is said to be a key component, because it would help determine the types and frequencies of public safety
incidents and issues and help them determine the types of services and number of officers required for each. It would also indicate whether some of those tasks could be done by social workers and psychologists rather than police officers.

“This could help Council select the best police service provider and improve public safety,” the report said. Council was expecting the Codiac Regional Policing Authority to carry out the workload analysis, but were told it might not be ready until August.

Councillors said it is important to have all the information before making a huge decision of keeping the RCMP service or cancelling the contract and forming a new regional police service. The Codiac Regional RCMP has been in place since 1998, when it replaced the Moncton Police Force, but citizens have raised concerns about public safety as the population continues to grow.

The cost of disbanding the RCMP and starting a new regional service is part of the argument. The study estimates the transition cost at $73.5 million over 15 years, and keeping the RCMP would cost about $132 million less over 15 years than creating a new municipal force.

At the end of Monday’s discussion, council voted in favour of two motions, which will have to be ratified at a future regular meeting. The first motion was to approve the recommendations from the Perivale + Taylor Policing Services Study and keep a regional police force with the Codiac RCMP. That motion was carried with councillors Daniel Bourgeois, Charles Leger, Shawn Crossman, Bryan Butler and Paul Richard registering nay votes. The second motion calls for a meeting of the RCMP, the Codiac Regional Policing Authority and the Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe councils to discuss how the recommendations of the report will be implemented. No date was set for this meeting. The motion was approved with nay votes from councillors Butler, Bourgeois and Richard.

Mayor Dawn Arnold said after the meeting that this was a big step toward the future of policing in Canada’s fastest-growing municipality.

“The hard work is yet to come. We have solid recommendations from experts on policing, but the ultimate goal is to provide the best police service to our community,” Arnold told reporters after the meeting.

“It’s hard to make a decision when you don’t have all the information and the biggest one has been the workload analysis, which for some reason hasn’t come out yet,” Coun. Bryan Butler said after the meeting. “I’m disappointed that the citizens never got a chance to listen and say which direction they wanted to go, and that’s very important.”

Butler said it is difficult to compare policing in Moncton to other cities but statistics on crime indicate something is wrong.

“We’ve got the lowest number of officers per population in New Brunswick and the lowest solvency rate and the highest crime rate. There’s something there. Do we need more boots on the streets? Well, the workload analysis would tell us that but it seems like every time we go to get it, it’s blocked,” Butler said. “We go to public meetings and people say we need more police officers, but it seems like our hands are tied. We are making decisions without having enough information.”