WHEREAS the Royal Canadian Mounted Police RCMP has a centralized dispatch system for requests for service arising from complaints from residents in communities in the southeast region of the province; AND WHEREAS complaints received by the central dispatch are relayed to the RCMP dispatch, which are further relayed to another dispatcher who, based on priority, relays the message to the community where the field officer is stationed and, as such, valuable time is lost in one recorded instance, as much as 20 minutes elapsed before the call was dispatched to the Community Police Officer: THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the UBCM request that the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General, who has the overall responsibility for administering the RCMP contract for electoral areas of regional districts and municipalities with a population of less than 5,000, provide additional funding and instruct the RCMP to improve dispatching procedures to minimize delays in citizen calls for service.
MINISTRY OF PUBLIC SAFETY AND SOLICITOR GENERAL Emergency 9-1-1 and non-emergency calls outside of business hours in the Grand Forks area are answered by the RCMP South East District Operational Communications Centre OCC located in Kelowna. Based on priority, the OCC then dispatches an officer from the relevant RCMP detachment in the case of Grand Forks, Boundary Regional Detachment. Emergency call answer statistics from July 2007 indicated that the OCC answered 21,554 calls with an average call answer time of 7.8 seconds. The OCC is maintaining the provincial standard of answering 90 of 9-1-1 calls within 10 seconds or less. The RCMP has indicated that a Telephone Reporting Centre within the OCC is currently being staffed which will improve call answer times for non-emergency calls. In addition, the OCC is piloting Call Centre Anywhere, a new telephone software from Telus, which is expected to improve the service for non-emergency calls as well.