Williams Lake Look to Feds to Help Fight Gang Problem
Williams Lake, B.C. – The City of Williams Lake is looking to the federal government for help fighting a spike in crime that’s terrorized the community.
The problem garnered provincial headlines last month when a 14 year old boy was robbed of his bike at gunpoint.
Last week Cariboo-Prince George Conservative MP Todd Doherty indicated he had met with Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale asking for additional officers for the community and additional resources to support at risk youth.
Mayor Walt Cobb – photo courtesy City of Williams Lake
Mayor Walt Cobb hopes the feds will listen and go a step further and send in a special gang unit.
“To come in and deal specifically with the gang issue. Just more police officers is not necessarily going to solve the issue,” he says. “There’s a three man team that usually comes in, apparently they had it in Prince George, where they come in and they are here for two or three years, at least 18 months, that deals specifically with prolific offenders.”
Cobb says the number varies, but estimates there are between 12 and 20 prolific offenders wreaking havoc at any given time there, many of which don’t even live within city limits.
“That’s what we’re told, yes. Some don’t live within city boundaries but we have to pay the cost.”
Cobb considers the proceeds from the provincial Civil Forfeiture Office and criminal forfeiture grants awarded to community groups for youth anti-gang, crime and violence prevention last week (worth over $167,000) a step in the right direction, and part of what he considers the City’s “long-term plan.”
“A plan to make sure that some of these kids don’t end up getting in this situation. To start with the parents, start with the schools, start with probation to make sure the younger ones don’t end up in this situation,” he says.
“The short-term plan is to deal with these prolific offenders. I mean just the other day one guy got out of jail and within 24 hours they had apprehended him again for doing something wrong.”
As for council’s unanimous vote to have prolific offenders injected with a GPS tracking device last month?
“Well, the injection thing was kind of overstated, but tracking them is definitely something we’re going to push for and that’s one of the things we’ll be talking about when we go to Ottawa.”
Comments
We were given to believe that the situation in Williams Lake was somewhat resolved a few years ago, and now it seems its wore than ever.
We need to deal with this problem, or those who break the laws will basically take over. We certainly spend enough money on policing costs, so what is the problem??
Sounds like the Mayor and some others are going to Ottawa. So is every Mayor in every small town in Canada heading to Ottawa hat in hand looking for a dollar??? We have Federal and Provincial people to take care of the big picture.
Got it all rong…..VIGILANTE-MAN…JUS LIKE THEY USED TO….
We need the Williams Lake equivalent of Batman
You mean Captain Canuck ? You do know that batman isn’t real right ?
The Williams Lake First Nations would be the obvious place to start, but Libs have made it politically incorrect to talk about the root of the problem.
First Nations are primarily Federal jurisdiction. The race/culture related “problem” has existed since Canada became a nation. The missionaries have not helped in the situation, neither have the federal and provincial governments of whatever stripe over the decades and more than a century.
Nothing is going to change until all parties sit down together nationally, provincially and even municipally.
Camppbell tried it and failed other than a few modern treaties which were created, including our own Lheidli T’enneh.
The Feds not only need to be at the table, but they have to lead the effort. They are still in control of the Indian Act.
I am sure there is a group of WL residents who know how to use a baseball bat and would love to dispense some fractures and concussions so that the POs aren’t so prolific anymore. What stops them from doing so, is the RCMP and the courts. Taxpaying citizens with jobs don’t want to go to jail, and don’t want to lose their stuff.
On the other hand, the RCMP and the courts can’t protect the residents from the PO’s who fear neither police, courts, or jail.
So we have an irony in that the RCMP who are paid to protect citizens from criminals, actually protect criminals from citizens.
Is it any wonder that the population of WL is falling ?
You want to inject them with tracking devices? How about we just lock them up in prison and then knowing where they are won’t be a problem and they won’t be causing anymore trouble either. Will this solution cost more? Probably. Will it make the community a nicer place to live? Probably.
I am sure Donald Trump would know how to deal with them. It is actually interesting that he has not slighted the “American Indians.” At least I have not heard of him doing that.
I sure red enough about that on this and other comment sections in Canada.
They’ve got enough of their own Donald’s . I can still remember the natives hurriedly digging up their relatives before they planted a shopping mall on top of their burial grounds back in the seventies . Respect is a two way street .
While Williams Lake does rank 6th nationally on Canada’s crime severity index, there are many BC cities that place way above average on the crime severity index. Fort St. John ranks 11th, Prince Rupert 8th, Terrace 10th, Prince George 14th, etc. Heck even the playground for the rich and famous Whistler, BC ranks 19th out 239 Canadian cities. No First Nations living around there, that’s for sure.
So why are a disproportionately large number of BC cities ranking so high on the national crime severity index? Perhaps we should be looking at a provincial solution for that problem, like maybe during next year’s election!
www .statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2012001/article/11692/tbl/csivalue-igcvaleurs-2011-eng.htm
The Province can never solve this problem. The problem, is drug addiction. If drug addiction could be solved by throwing money at the problem, then why do so many celebrities struggle with it all their lives.
Addicts will do what they have to, to get what they need.
So the solution – which is a Federal solution – is to legalize all drugs, so that addicts can get the drugs they need at an affordable price, and not have to terrorize regular people.
From Washington Post
A group of 22 medical experts convened by Johns Hopkins University and The Lancet have called today for the decriminalization of all nonviolent drug use and possession. Citing a growing scientific consensus on the failures of the global war on drugs, the experts further encourage countries and U.S. states to “move gradually toward regulated drug markets and apply the scientific method to their assessment.”
In a lengthy review of the state of global drug policy, the Hopkins-Lancet experts conclude that the prohibitionist anti-drug policies of the past 50 years “directly and indirectly contribute to lethal violence, disease, discrimination, forced displacement, injustice and the undermining of people’s right to health.”
Hmmm, I always thought the RCMP were supposed to take care of these things. Guess I was wrong.
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