Cops answer questions over Coffee in Maple Ridge

Recently Ridge Meadows Police welcomed the community for coffee and conversation about their role in the community.

Six readers relayed questions through The News to ask Supt. Wendy Mehat, the officer in charge of the Ridge Meadows detachment, and Corp. Julie Klaussner, media and communications, who were outside The Nut coffee shop, talking with those who stopped by to chat.

Steven Gosling asked: What is one issue you deal with regularly that you think would be best solved with prevention instead of cure? Giving examples of housing first for issues associated with the homeless, and roadway design for traffic issues.

“So we deal with a number of issues and requests from the community. Anything from peoples’ concerns with traffic safety. That is something we hear quite often. And that would be speeding, impaired driving, and distracted driving,” explained Mehat.

Secondly, she said, they also hear concerns about community safety, especially in regards to drugs, the usage of drugs, concerns of homelessness, and some of the social and complex issues that play out as a result of those issues.

“My response would be it’s just not one concern that we get in policing it’s quite varied. And with each issue, we assess these issues and then decide what our action plan is,” she said, noting that when it comes to concerns about traffic, as an example, they will take the community’s complaints and mobilize a plan.

And, she added, a lot of the work that they do is community driven.

“We will hear, we will listen, we assess the situation, we use Analytics to determine where’s the most crashes, where’s the most concerns and complaints and then we mobilize.”

When it comes to housing, she elaborated, that is something the police lean more on community partners for answers.

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“Because as police we normally deal with public safety issues and concerns and crime prevention, not so much a lot of commentary on how to access affordable housing,” Mehat answered, noting that they are starting up a situation table in the city for police to refer clients to and they are very interested in having a mental health liaison police unit in the community.

They are also working on having a similar program to Car 67, a program in Surrey between the RCMP and the Fraser Health Authority Mental Health and Addiction Services, where a uniformed officer and a clinical nurse specializing in mental health work together to respond to calls involving emotional and mental health issues.

Mehat also noted that they are actively doing patrols in the downtown core where they have been hearing community complaints and they actively mobilize their volunteers and Integrated Safety Ambassador Team, to help support them with more social and complex issues.

“And we also pair up quite frequently with Community Safety Officers to address those issues as well,” said Mehat.

Jackie Chow asked: Percentage-wise, how much of RCMP resources are used for dealing with homelessness, drug addiction and crime, and how much on traffic enforcement?

Mehat replied that she doesn’t have access to percentages.

“I can say that we do, as police, deal with quite a bit of concerns with traffic issues.”

She said not only are they quite active in traffic enforcement, but also preventative measures. They team up quite often with ICBC to do community campaigns, she noted, like the RCMP’s Think of Me Campaign, where children ask drivers to think of their safety when driving through school zones. In addition to distracted driving campaigns, speed enforcement, and speed watch.

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Mehat also added when it comes to drug enforcement, that they have a strong team and a street enforcement unit that deals with long-term and short-term drug enforcement plans and projects.

She said Project Core is a project they use quite often to deal with more of the downtown community core issues, like the usage of street level drugs and some of the violence associated with that. And then there is the Integrated Safety Ambassador Team, who are paired with a either a Community Safety Officer or a police officer to form patrols in the community. The team then downloads what they learned on their patrol into their computerized patrol portal and that information is provided to the police or bylaws officers, or the relevant city department to take action.

Conni Christensen asked: Does ridge Meadows have a dedicated traffic section again?

Corp. Julie Klaussner replied that this would be the Road Safety Target Team, whose job is about public education and enduring public safety.

Klaussner said one area where police received a lot of interest in was high occupancy vehicle checks.

“We hear concerns from people in Pitt Meadows that people are using (the high occupancy) lane, cutting in and out and causing safety concerns for people’s driving because people are diving erratically or have concerning behaviour surrounding that,” she explained.

Police, she said, are responding to the community’s ongoing concerns and are utilizing initiatives to deal with those issues.

Katie Stein Sather asked: I’m concerned about the apparent “over-policing” of some people. How is the RCMP addressing this issue?

“I would say that’s not an RCMP here issue. This question would be more of a question for E Division. That’s an RCMP as a total question as opposed to like this detachment specifically,” replied Klaussner.

Don Cameron asked: What do members think of the current “catch and release” program that the courts are using and what would it take to change it? On a provincial or federal level?

The police role is to enforce the law, explained Klaussner, and then forward charges and it’s the court’s decision how to deal with those offences.

“That’s not something we can speak to,” she said.