RCMP's Roll Call at City Council set for later this month

Residents of Prince Rupert and members of City Council will be receiving the first update in a long time from the local detachment of the RCMP later this month, with Council members hearing from the City's Financial Officer on the topic.

That as Corinne Bomben advised Council on Monday, that the RCMP have confirmed that they will be in attendance at City Hall later this month to provide for an update.

The confirmation came following some comments from Councillor Barry Cunningham, who followed up on the theme introduced last month by Councillor Nick Adey.

Mr. Cunningham observed as to some of his frustration in bringing the RCMP and council together;  noting that he has been speaking to how the City addressed the issue of presentations for more than a few years.

"Getting onto a point that Councillor Adey brought up about using the COW to bring the RCMP and other agencies in to give a report, I believe it was almost a year and half ago when Council passed a resolution that we would do things like that and it's been very sporadic about people coming before Council and the COW so I would like Council to give a direction to staff to come up with a schedule of who is coming and when they're coming"

Mr. Cunningham also touched on the current of Mr. Adey's commentary of last month, speaking as to how the public is looking for more information when it comes to the work of the RCMP in the community.

"I really think that the people in the city want to hear from the RCMP and the Fire Department and I don't know why we don't give regular reports on both of them, Just so people are aware what's going on. 

We get asked a lot of questions as councillors and I think that if they come and give the facts and figures  like Councillor Adey had said ... no one is hiding anything it's just that if they come out and give these figures out it will help a lot of people in the community and quash a lot of rumours."

Judging by the back and forth of the conversation on Monday, it does seem at times that the Mayor and some of his council members may not be on the same page, particularly when it comes to the frequency for appearances of members of the detachment at Council.

With the Mayor seemingly suggesting that updates from the RCMP and Fire Department should be as part of the same rotation as presentations from the Library, Lester Centre and Arts Groups.

Now if we're reading the recent themes of Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Adey approaches to Council, they would appear to be looking for somewhat more regular updates through the year from the detachment.

Something that would look to provide the community with a better understanding of the challenges of policing in the city and to provide updates on important themes for the public.

Something that clearly wouldn't be available from the kind of rotating schedule the Mayor was speaking of.

A wider overview of the discussion between the Mayor and Councillor can be found from our Council Timeline feature.

You can also review the conversation between the Mayor and Councillor Cunningham from the City's Video Archive starting at the twenty one minute mark.




As we noted last month following Councillor Adey's presentation on the theme, some good examples can be found in the neighbouring communities, with Terrace, Smithers and Kitimat making time for reports from their detachments on a fairly regular schedule through the year, allowing for questions from Council members as any issues come up.

As well, Council may want to offer up some desire to see the local detachment follow the lead of the one in Terrace, which regularly provides for a listing of recently opened case files, something which helps to reduce the spread of rumours and serves to keep the community informed as to the work of their members in that city.

Since there's no guarantee as to when we may see them again, lets hope that the City's council members come prepared with lots of questions for the RCMP members when they appear at City Council later this month.

For more notes related to Monday's Council session see our Council Archive here, a wider overview of Council Discussion themes can be explored here.

For a look at some of the work of Emergency Responders across the Northwest see our archive page here.