Yellowknife RCMP will ‘strive to increase presence in downtown area’

Police in Yellowknife say they are trying to increase their visibility downtown but are also having to manage ongoing vacancies at the detachment.

At the end of last year, RCMP bosses in the territory said one in five policing positions in the NWT was a hard vacancy, meaning “we don’t have anybody named, we have no idea who’s going to that position.”

At the time, managers said staffing levels at the Yellowknife detachment were slowly showing an improvement.

Answering questions from city councillors on Monday, Insp Kurtis Pillipow said the detachment remains below full staffing and recruiters are “making extraordinary efforts to enhance the staffing levels – not just at our detachment, across the division.”

“We do have some human resource pressures and will continue for the foreseeable future,” said Pillipow, though he added Yellowknife is a community in which “people want to live” and some reinforcements are on the way.

In the meantime, he told councillors, RCMP in the city are “collaborating with our internal and external partners to provide the best service we can.”

Earlier this month, outlining its approach to temporary encampments, the city called on the NWT government and RCMP to provide more support. In particular, council asked for a more visible police presence downtown.

On Monday, Pillipow told council: “We do have a plan in place and we are collaborating with MED [the municipal enforcement division] from the city here to enhance our physical presence in the downtown area, whether it be foot patrols or bicycle patrols.”

Sometimes, Pillipow acknowledged, police in vehicles travelling from one place to another don’t provide that kind of visibility. “We do want to strive to increase our presence in the downtown area,” he said.

A more visible police presence was just one of a number of items in the earlier council resolution, which addressed encampments as well as broader downtown concerns.

In that resolution, council also looked to enforcement of the city’s own bylaws as a means of dealing with encampments that are perceived to interfere with the lives of other residents in the vicinity.

On Monday, the city disclosed a structure removal order to Cabin Radio that demonstrates this kind of approach.

The order – for an encampment structure in an alley behind a downtown liquor store – shows six officials, including Pillipow, visited the structure on May 30 and declared it unsafe under city bylaws and the National Building Code.

Addressed to a land management division within the GNWT, the letter orders the structure’s removal by June 6. Early the following week, a lawyer representing members of the encampment told Cabin Radio the group had relocated – after consultation with the GNWT – to an area outside the downtown core, near the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.

Three RCMP priorities

Crime reduction and interruption, involving “specifically targeted enforcement responses to reduce harm to the overall community,” forms one of three priorities Pillipow set out and to which council agreed.

“When I talk about harm reduction in the community, it’s from different scales,” Pillipow told council on Monday.

“It’s what we see at street level, disruptions of people’s businesses and day-to-day lives, up to more the organized crime in terms of illicit drug trafficking, for example.”

The second priority is reconciliation and community leadership engagement. The third is enhancing road safety.

“I think your presence will be instrumental in acting as a deterrence here,” councillor Garett Cochrane said of the plan to increase downtown visibility.

“I’m happy to hear the collaboration with MED, working on foot patrols and bike patrols. I think that should act as the kind of presence that we need.”

Pillipow said crime reduction efforts will look for “the most bang for our buck” in terms of how the detachment’s existing resources can be deployed, including initiatives that are “the lowest in terms of resource investment but yet still have impact for the greater community.”

“Presence in the community is going to be one of the paramount features, just because officer presence can do so much to deter and disrupt crime at many levels,” he said.

“It’s really great to hear that you guys are all about presence downtown,” said councillor Ryan Fequet.

“Council recognizes that MED and the RCMP have a lot of things they are actually responsible for but not enough time, people and resources to necessarily tackle them all as much as we would like.”

Sarah Pruys contributed reporting.