Kelowna’s top cop pledges 5 per cent drop in crime rate

KELOWNA – Kelowna's top cop introduced the detachment’s 2016-2019 crime reduction strategy to city councillors Monday, promising a new era of data-driven, evidence-based policing and a pledge to reduce crime by five per cent.

Promising accountability, Supt. Nick Romanchuk said meeting or beating the number of people who say they feel safe in Kelowna (94 per cent in the citizen’s survey) plus regular reporting to both council and the public will be the centrepiece of the strategy.

Other measures will be the crime rate in Kelowna, as measured by criminal code infractions per 1,000 residents (97.2 in 2015, up 11 per cent from the year before), the breakdown of those offences into crimes against persons and property plus the number of hours of community policing.

Romanchuk said bylaw offences for panhandling, transient behaviour, loitering on roads and sidewalks and good neighbour bylaw infractions will be measured and reported.

The detachment’s CompStat predictive modelling allows for crime statistic analysis to better understand prolific offenders and crime hot spots, the superintendent said.

“Once we get all that data, we run it through the big machine and it tells us where we need to be proactive,” Romanchuk added.

Lowering response times for priority calls to seven minutes is also a target, Romanchuk said. Current priority call response time is an average of 8.5 minutes, as measured last November, while secondary call response times are just below the target of 10 minutes.

Councillors had many individual questions and concerns, from bike patrols to the efficacy of the downtown red zone, but were supportive of the strategy and endorsed it with little debate.

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