By Cheryl Jahn

New crime-fighting tools on the way

Feb 10, 2022 | 12:10 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – When the RCMP gets a call for service – possibly a mental health call – the officer on scene will soon be able to use a program called Health IM to do an on-the-scene assessment of the individual’s mental state to determine the best course of action.

“It really helps us go through risk factors in a standardized fashion, utilizing medical terminology and criteria and then making a determination based on those educated factors. With regard to whether we apprehend someone under the Mental Health Act and forcibly take them to hospital for treatment from a mental health professional or not.”

And if the hospital is that individual’s destination, the information can be forwarded to triage, cutting down the waiting process by 60 percent.

One item on the Superintendent’s wish list for a long time is right around the corner. A sobering centre, the details of which are still unknown.

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But the Superintendent also put several other agencies on notice. To use a quote: “We don’t have time to be doing other peoples’ work.”

“When a call for service comes in of a person down with no known criminality, potentially a medical issue, typically the police will be the first to respond to that. Because we have the resources to respond to that,” explains Supt Wright. “But on the face of it, that really isn’t a criminal incident until there’s evidence of that. And quite often it’s someone who’s intoxicated or is overdosed and is truly a medical issue that the police don’t need to be involved in.”

As the majority funding body for the RCMP, Mayor and Council are one hundred percent behind a review of the RCMP core mandate.

“And that’s part of the review that’s going to be done,” says Mayor Lyn Hall. “You talk about the core mandate, the core function of the RCMP. And there have been so many things added to it. So you’ve become someone who provides social services to individuals on calls that you go to. That’s not what the RCMP should be doing.”

Earlier this week, the City launched a CCTV registration program. By being able to access the registry, the police will be able to quickly identify potential sources of video evidence, decreasing the time of an investigation.

“It was RCMP-proposed but the City owns that. You know, for anybody who has some hesitancy about saying ‘Hey I’ve got cameras here but I don’t know if I want police to have access.’ we don’t have access to your video if you sign up to the registry. We don’t even hold the information in the registry. Basically, if we have an incident, and we want to query that registry, we’ll contact the City.”

And finally, the city will be launching a new property crime mapping system on its open data portal.