Big leadership changes for Central Okanagan RCMP underway behind the scenes

For years Kelowna has been the hub for the RCMP in the Central Okanagan but changes are coming behind the scenes.

Kelowna’s new Officer in Charge, Supt. Chris Goebel, said the plan is to restructure the way police detachments in the Central Okanagan are led so that each detachment in Kelowna, West Kelowna and Lake Country make decisions for their own community and go directly to the local municipal council and RCMP district command.

Each detachment is going to have its own officer in charge that reports to the district command rather than to the Kelowna detachment.

“What that does is really reduces some of the administrative bottlenecks that we have. Right now they would have a unit commander in each of those that report to the senior leadership team in Kelowna,” Supt. Goebel told iNFOnews.ca.

“What was really important for us is to have detachment commanders that are in the community accountable to that community and that don’t have to come to Kelowna to get approval for certain things.”

Kelowna’s community safety director Darren Caul said in an emailed statement that the city still has decisions to make this fall in order to iron out the details, but there’s no sign of a major change to the cost of policing.

“The City of Kelowna, and its regional partners, are working with the RCMP and the province to review how best to organize our collective resources, which functions and units should continue to operate in shared manner, and then we will determine an equitable way to cost-share those services,” he wrote.

Supt. Goebel said Kelowna asked for a review of its policing, and the BC RCMP came back with the idea that each community should have its own leadership.

The city has also hired a consultant who is reviewing whether Kelowna ought to move to a municipal police force. Kelowna RCMP’s budget has doubled since 2020, up to $76.7 million this year.

Supt. Goebel said the RCMP is still the best dollar value for policing.

“The reality is every municipality is working hard, I think specifically with Kelowna, to ensure fiscal prudence. And part of that is making sure that they get the best service for the money that they’re spending for their citizens. And we believe that the RCMP is that service,” he said.

“The feedback that we’ve got from Kelowna has consistently been that they’re happy with the services that we’re providing.” 

The decentralization of the Kelowna RCMP detachment wouldn’t make much of a difference if the city eventually decides to switch to a municipal police force, since that would be a massive change.

“That’s something that would, I think, come out in the review. But I think in my perspective, it really wouldn’t make it any easier or different. Really, at the end of the day, that’s a completely different model. It has a significant amount of work and a significant amount of efforts and costs associated with it,” Supt. Goebel said.

He said the leadership change wouldn’t affect police officers on the ground because the same officers are going to be patrolling the same communities in the same roles. When a major incident like the William R. Bennett bridge bomb threat over the winter happens, he said each detachment is going to work together the same way they have in the past.

“I spent the majority of my career in the Lower Mainland, where we have a number of different police services working side by side, and the boundary is really a street. You might have RCMP on one side, municipal jurisdiction on the other. And when crisis happens, everybody steps up and supports each other. And I see it as being no different in this region that we’ll continue to support each other and be there for each other when we need it,” Supt. Goebel said.

It’s still early days in the transition and he said there isn’t an exact timeline. Detachments need to hire staff and make sure that people are in place in West Kelowna or Lake Country to take on responsibilities that used to be someone’s job in Kelowna.

“We have to be mindful that there is a process that we have to