Prince George City Council heard a report on enhanced patrols in the downtown area at last night’s (Monday) meeting.
“I don’t think we learned any real surprises, but up until the point where we did these series of overnight patrols, all of the information we had was anecdotal,” said Manager of Bylaw Services Charlotte Peters.
“So this gave us an opportunity to see what was happening on the streets of Prince George through the night, and gave us an opportunity to talk to some of the folks who are on the street through the night, and listen to some of their thoughts on what could be done going forward.”
Ten patrols were conducted between May 18th and June 18th, comprised of a bylaw officer and a firefighter.
“The goals of these patrols were, first of all, to gather data, second of all, to stop and talk to offenders, and warn them through some actual experience from a firefighter as to how dangerous these situations can be,” Peters explained.
“The third goal was to conduct an escalating strategy of enforcement.”
Peters said they were successful in the first two goals, but the third was difficult.
“Due to some scheduling and shortages, we didn’t get the expected support we thought we were going to have from the RCMP,” Peters explained.
“But hopefully if we do this again, we will get that.”
It was noted that there was an average of between 45 and 60 people spoken to during each patrol, and they encountered 58 fires.
“Most of the fires that we encountered were small, they were being used for warmth and they were easy to put out,” Peters said.
“What we were interested in mostly though, was the fuel for the fires, which was in most instances, garbage, pallets that had been left in the downtown or cardboard.”
Peters also said they were able to talk to the people in the downtown and ask why they were not in either the Lower Patricia encampment or a shelter, and they received “consistent answers”.
“If they weren’t at Lower Patricia, it was essentially because of the criminality that was taking place down there,” she explained.
“If they weren’t in shelters, it was because they had been banned, or they had been too late to get into the shelter.”
The report came with several recommendations, such as establishing programs to recycle cardboard and ensuring pallets are properly disposed of, and working with BC housing to examine the rules and restrictions of provincially funded shelters in Prince George.
Council voted in favour of all recommendations presented.
It was noted there isn’t a timeline on some of the bigger items.
“Hearing folks are banned from shelters, ok, there’s situations people are going to get banned, but simply banning folks doesn’t work, BC Housing doesn’t just get to abdicate their responsibilities because somebody was hard to house, they are responsible for housing people in our province,” said Councillor Kyle Sampson.
“I’ll just throw it out there, I think we should be advocating for involuntary treatment, if folks are hard to house, that means they’re going through some mental health issues that are of a great extent, and if they’re not able to self identify that they need treatment, then we should be advocating for involuntary treatment.”
Sampson moved referring the topic of advocacy of involuntary treatment to Council’s Standing Committee on Intergovernmental Affairs, and back to the Council table if necessary.
“It’s not necessarily that we’re going to do this advocacy, the Committee’s going to look at it and then potentially bring it back for a recommendation to council,” he explained.
Council passed the recommendation with Councillor Cori Ramsay the lone Councillor opposed.
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