Richmond city staff is not recommending council give more powers and duties to bylaw officers.
The topic came up a couple months ago when Coun. Kash Heed asked city staff to look into the feasibility of allowing bylaw officers to become peace officers.
This would mean the city would “lose a key oversight power in regards to frontline Bylaw Enforcement Officers who are charged with upholding the City’s Bylaws,” explained the director of bylaws, Mark Corrado, in a report going to the community safety committee next week.
This is because they would be sworn under the Police Act and, therefore, under the jurisdiction of the RCMP officer-in-charge, the report elaborated.
Missing from the report, however, is a comparison to other municipalities, Heed said, and he’s not convinced Richmond bylaw officers, acting as peace officers, would be under the jurisdiction of the Richmond RCMP.
“I don’t think I have the necessary information in front of me to make a decision,” Heed said of the report.
Heed would like to see a "tiered" system of community safety.
Having peace officers would be the first step, and the city wouldn't have to always rely on RCMP to carry out all community safety functions, Heed explained.
Some duties could be done by lower-tiered officers, Heed said, not always by the highest paid, “armed to the teeth” RCMP officers.
“We need to detach our police officers from many of these calls,” Heed said. “Part of detaching is having some alternate response.”
The next step he’d like to see is community safety officers in Richmond, possibly modelled after the Vancouver Police Department.
In Vancouver, community safety officers perform lower-risk tasks, such as perimeter security at police incidents, tagging and transporting property and giving support at big events and emergencies.
According to the report going to the community safety meeting, a bylaw allowing bylaw officers to be sworn in under the Police Act was rescinded by city council in October 2017.
The report notes bylaw officers have all the same powers as peace officers with one difference – they can’t serve court summons which would lead to prosecution in provincial court.
If the city needs to serve court summons, they contract out to a third-party agency.
