A security guard outside the Canfor Leisure Centre

By Tommy Osborne

Pool Security

City examining drug incident at Aquatic Centre

Apr 30, 2024 | 5:07 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – An incident at the Prince George Aquatic Centre on April 25 has the City of Prince George looking into ways to keep the facility and our community safe. The incident saw a person setting fires outside of the Aquatic Centre, and over the next several hours the person was allegedly consuming drugs inside one of the locker rooms.

“The Aquatic Centre situation was horrible for everyone involved; staff, public, no one wants those kinds of situations to occur. And please be assured that city staff at all levels are examining all options against available budget to keep everyone safe,” said City Councillor Susan Scott.

RCMP responded to the event, but some community members have concerns about the amount of time it took for police to get to the scene, as some reported there was a delay in the response time. The RCMP explained this is because the caller called the 9-1-1 line, but a case like this would be suited for the non-emergency line instead. Given that this was not a life or death situation, RCMP explained it first had to redirect the call to the non-emergency line, and from there dispatch officers, which caused the delayed response time.

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“It’s not that we don’t want people calling 9-1-1. We do want them to call 9-1-1, but we also have the non-emergency line which allows us to triage what’s going on a little bit better and prioritize our response times,” said Prince George RCMP Media Relations Officer Cpl. Jennifer Cooper. “There’s only a finite amount, a very small amount, of 9-1-1 priority lines for the entire northern region. So they do like to keep those free in case something comes in that requires a lot of dispatch response and police attendance.”

“There was no undue service delay in this incident. Police officers were able to attend to this file very efficiently given the other priority calls that were also coming in around the same time. At no time were any threats made by the suspect to anyone in the facility, which would have changed police response, as was seen with May first’s Pine Centre Mall incident, for example. While we are not unsympathetic to the fact that this is a facility where children were present, the details of the incident did not necessarily warrant a Priority 1, or lights-and-sirens, response,” Cooper continued.

Unlike the Canfor Leisure Centre or the Civic Centre when events are held, the Aquatic Centre does not have security. Now that this incident has taken place, is the City considering security for the Aquatic Centre as well? Scott says it’s definitely a thought, but there is a lot to consider first.

“We have to make sure that the staffing level is appropriate, that all of the people that are required to be present are present, and that whether it is contract services or having RCMP available as they are at times with the Canfor leisure pool, then that’s what happens as well,” Scott said.

As for whether or not another incident may perhaps expedite a potential security investigation, Scott added once is already too much when it comes to an incident like this, so the City is already examining the situation seriously, and will later determine if any extra action is needed to keep our facilities safe.

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