Like many growing communities, Niverville has experienced waves of petty crime in the past few years that home and business owners alike are hard-pressed to ignore. While the RCMP presence from the St. Pierre-Jolys detachment has been relatively effective, residents of the community have wanted to know if more can be done.

In 2017, two Niverville residents, Lindsay Unrau and Barry Piasta, began a petition asking town council to take a look at the feasibility of other options, including an independent locally run police force. Council responded by commissioning a study to investigate.

In December 2018, council received the 30-page report prepared by Rick Hiebert, former police chief for the city of Winkler.

The Hybrid Model

“After having an independent police study completed… and having given Niverville town council time to review the report, town council has set a strategy for policing going forward,” said Mayor Myron Dyck at a February 19 council meeting. “In setting the vision, council sees benefit to a hybrid model of retaining the RCMP service but augmenting [it] with stronger municipal enforcement mechanisms.”
 

What this means for the community going forward is the continuation of the RCMP presence in Niverville for higher level services requiring their trained expertise. Council will be looking at a number of ways to manage the lower level policing requirements, such as education, surveillance, and ways to address incidents of theft and Highway Traffic Act violations.

“While council acknowledges that the RCMP have it in their duties to provide service for lower level policing, the reality is that all things not lower level are consuming their time and limited resources and that this is not likely to change anytime soon,” Dyck says. “Thus, council sees it as necessary to come alongside and lower the pressure on the RCMP services… [using] municipal resources.”

These resources would include adding more security cameras in public spaces around the community to discourage illegal activity and to assist the RCMP in documenting incidents. Council hopes to employ staff, who will work within privacy legislation, to provide real-time monitoring of the camera footage, especially during the night-time hours when more surveillance is needed.

Council will support the volunteers and community groups such as the Citizens on Patrol Program for a safer community. They will also investigate technology and innovation to assist with ground-level policing.

Since the initial petition requesting a police study, council has had dialogue and meetings with Manitoba’s Department of Justice. Council eventually made two requests to the department. The first was that greater power be given to bylaw enforcement officers, to match legislation that has already been passed in Alberta, granting them the ability to issue traffic tickets over and above enforcing community bylaws. If such legislation is adopted by the province, council would begin a move toward hiring its own full-time enhanced bylaw enforcement officer and discontinue the part-time contract position they have now.

The town’s second request to the province was that greater power be given to Community Safety Officers (CSOs), a program established by the Province of Manitoba to augment policing services. While CSOs currently have the authority to apprehend suspects in cases of alcohol and drug consumption in public places, council would like to see their power extended to the apprehension and questioning of people involved in other suspicious activity. Council also recommended that CSOs be provided the authority to carry necessary weapons, aside from a gun. Under these circumstances, council would also be prepared to hire CSOs to work in the community.

“Niverville town council sees [this] hybrid model…as a less expensive option than developing a full-fledged municipal police force as a way to deliver the desired results of a safer community at this time,” says a press release from council. “This policing strategy will be reviewed annually and will include annual meetings, or more as needed, with the Department of Justice and the ‘D’ Division of the RCMP. By having a hybrid approach, council believes that flexibility exists to have policing that meets the needs of the community in the years ahead.”

The Study

The policing study investigated two options for improving Niverville’s current policing situation. The first looked at hiring an independent police force staffed with five officers and one support person. The total start-up cost for such a venture would come to $477,000 and include the officers’ personal equipment, cruisers, office equipment, and recruitment training. The breakdown does not include the cost of construction of a police headquarters or the renovation of an existing building to accommodate them. The known cost of $477,000 would mean an approximate cost to each property owner of $227 on their tax bill.

Ongoing annual operating costs would come in at about $575,000 and would cover wages and benefits, office supplies, vehicle repair and maintenance, an equipment replacement reserve, as well as miscellaneous expenses. These costs would add an additional $274 per property annually. The anticipated revenue from a municipal police force was estimated at $36,000.

Conversely, the report assessed the feasibility of instituting a Community Safety Officer Program. According to the analysis, only one officer would be required for the Town of Niverville in the early stages. Start-up costs would come in at $58,800, or $28 per property. This would provide equipment for one officer, a cruiser estimated at $50,000, and recruitment training.

A much smaller location would be required for such an endeavour. Hiebert encouraged council to consider the feasibility of providing space within the newly acquired administrative building. The cost of such a renovation would need to be determined and is not considered in the breakdown. Annual ongoing costs for wages and benefits, cruiser maintenance, and miscellaneous expenses would total about $62,500 annually, or $29 per property per year.

“Niverville is looking for a higher level of police presence and proactive work,” says Rick Hiebert in the town’s press release. “It’s also in a situation where policing costs will rise dramatically after the next census regardless of the policing option chosen.”

Hiebert adds that if the town decides to stay with the current RCMP policing program, it would be advisable to enter into a contract with Manitoba Justice to allow Niverville to employ CSOs to assist.

If a decision is made to create an independent police service, a professional police-friendly functionality design would need to be drawn up for a new building or the renovation of an existing building.

“It’s no secret that a number of larger urban centres in Manitoba have actively explored going the direction of establishing their own municipal police services,” says Hiebert, “but in each case, it’s the start-up costs that are most concerning. The larger a community gets, the more it will cost to make this move. If this is the direction that Niverville feels it needs to go, then the sooner the better.”

Eric King, chief administrative officer for the Town of Niverville, says he feels confident that council’s recent decision is a sound one.

“A single police officer is going to cost you six figures,” King says. “A CSO is going to cost you half and, if given the appropriate powers through the Police Act, can pull me over for speeding… but currently [the CSO] does not have those powers. Think of the cost saved by using a CSO. We need someone more cost effective to do the legwork, such as writing the reports. So if my house gets broken into… you know there’s someone local there to take a report and send it to RCMP to address. Instead of having someone that makes $125,000 a year write that report, why can’t someone who’s making $70,000 a year make the report and send it to the person whose making $125,000 and they can investigate and arrest?”

Council imagines a high-profile presence for the CSO, making regular visits to the schools and investing themselves into the lives of the community. But until Manitoba Justice makes a clear decision on council’s proposals, the extent of a CSO’s responsibility is as yet undetermined.

Other Communities

Thompson was the first Manitoba city to develop a pilot program, partnering with the provincial government to hire and train CSOs to alleviate the work of the local RCMP detachment. The program has been in effect there since 2015. The province had agreed to subsidize Thompson’s trial program until the end of 2017.

The CSOs in Thompson actively patrol the city’s downtown, dealing with alcohol- and drug-related crime and assisting and taking calls for patients with mental health issues. They have the authority to transport and wait with patients in hospital, freeing up the RCMP’s time for other calls. In 2017, about 4,000 calls a year were coming in for disturbances and the CSOs were taking about 30 percent of those calls.

Thompson’s mayor, Dennis Fenske, told the CBC in late 2017 that CSOs play a vital role in his community. He added that even if the government pulled out on funding, the city would make every effort to keep the program going.

“Certainly we’ll continue our funding,” Fenske told the CBC. “We’ll have to look at reductions or a different funding model but it’s certainly a valuable program [and] we can’t lose it.”1

As for the model employed by the RM of Springfield, which has an independent police force that works together with the RCMP, King says that it is a hybrid system of policing that is no longer allowed under Manitoba Justice legislation. Municipalities today are given two options: an independent force or RCMP, but not both.

This is not to say that an independent force cannot call on the RCMP for assistance, but that this assistance could come at an additional cost established by the RCMP on an a la carte basis.

In the meantime, council will soon be reopening the local police office and is currently training a staff member to manage the office and perform administrative police-related duties there. RCMP will also be encouraged to use the facility for their own administrative work.

No Full Report

As it stands, the full policing report is not available to the public with the exception of a summary of its recommendations and cost breakdowns. Council has said that the Hiebert, the author of the report, has maintained a copyright on the document, allowing only council to review its full content. This, council says, is to protect his research from being passed on to other municipalities who might choose to use it as a blueprint rather than hire their own professional to complete a new study.

Lindsay Unrau, one of the residents whose petition helped convince the town to commission the report, still isn’t satisfied that residents of Niverville have been given the answers they need.

“While I can appreciate that our town council has made an effort to reshape our policing [system], their press release leaves many unanswered questions,” says Unrau. “It is imperative that council release the full police study which was created at the expense of the resident. Neglecting their due diligence in this matter equates to allowing this study to be conducted in bad faith. It is their obligation to give us what we paid for.”

Unrau says that residents deserve to know how the annual cost for an independent police force would stack up to the inevitable increase in RCMP costs when the community’s population reaches 5,000. She also questions the potential risk that hired CSOs might be placed under.

“How are these bylaw officers and community safety officers going to protect themselves in dangerous situations?” she asks. “Traffic stops are one of the most dangerous duties of a police officer and they are trained extensively and can carry a gun. Are we asking employees who are without the same permissions and training as RCMP to perform such dangerous tasks?”

For Unrau, the newly released information barely scratches the surface of this important public safety issue.