Staffing continues to be a big concern for the Cranbrook RCMP, with officers on leave and some retiring.
“Right now we have 24 members on paper. We have three hard vacancies, so that’s members who have transferred or retired and their replacements haven’t shown up,” said S/Sgt. Barry Graham.
“We have seven soft vacancies, so out of 24 we have 14.”
He says everyone has had to pitch in and work extra hours, but they are hoping for some relief soon.
“You know things are bad when I’m working a night shift,” he added.
“It’s not good right now but we are optimistic that some of our members will come back and over the fall we will have three members arrive, but that’s where we sit with emergency response.”
The Cranbrook detachment has had off-and-on staffing issues for a number of years and city councillor Wes Graham says it might be time to look at other staffing options.
“Hearing that dreary story it does raise alarm. I feel like we’ve been in this tight situation for the last four years and maybe longer. We’re always optimistic but it seems like nothing delivers,” he said.
“Maybe we need to start looking at a different way of policing and start looking at different types of bodies that we bring in that aren’t full RCMP but are maybe community safety officers. I think there are outside-of-the-box solutions here instead of being hopefully optimistic. Just being optimistic isn’t solving the problems on the streets.”
S/Sgt. Graham agrees but says other options aren’t necessarily an easy fix.
“We have to look at every possible option,” he said.
“We did look into community safety officers and had meetings with five different detachments and there is some value to that but they are all tiered plans where a police officer needs to be involved in it.”
The detachment was able to recently hire a new operations support NCO.
Sgt. Graham Hartl will oversee the general investigations unit, mental health liaison and community and Indigenous policing.
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