Community stakeholders took another step toward developing a made in the Cariboo crime reduction strategy in Williams Lake Tuesday.
Hosted by the province’s blue ribbon panel on crime reduction, about 50 community stakeholders gathered at city hall to discuss ways to improve communication and collaboration among service providers in order to allow for a multi-agency response to youth and adults at risk of committing crime in the area.
The strategy to strengthen inter-agency collaboration, one of five recommendations made by the panel following a province-wide review, was the focus of the meeting where Insp. Milo MacDonald of the Williams Lake RCMP discussed the Prolific Offender Program and current crime trends, followed by another presentation from members of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit — the province’s anti-gang agency.
“I am excited about the work being done,” MacDonald said in an interview after the meeting.
“The idea is to improve our community response to help those individuals in crisis in a more holistic way, providing them with access to the resources we already have in the community that they may need but are not accessing,” he said, noting often people in crisis could benefit from many services such as housing, mental health, addictions, counselling, education and employment. Having a strategy in place to access those resources quicker is expected to reduce crime, according to the panel’s report.
“The police would be just one small voice at that table,” MacDonald said. “We already have successful working groups now, but this is a way of broadening that work across the whole society.”
Notably absent from the meeting was Chief Joe Alphonse of the Tl’etinqox (Anaham Reserve), where many of the city’s prolific offenders are from. The notorious 712 gang is also from the community.
Alphonse said he wasn’t invited in time to make the meeting and hasn’t had any meaningful consultation with the panel at all.
“Over and over my words fall on deaf ears and all I see is the problem escalating,” Alphonse said Thursday.
“Our community has lost two people to gang activity in the last year. I think our community, and the other community dealing with the gang problem, should be a priority. You have to get to the small communities, the reserves. I think if they come to our community and see what we’re dealing with on a daily basis and give us some resources to deal with it I think then you can make some headway.”
Alphonse said he believes the solution in his community is to increase sport activities for youth, positive mentoring, a strong connection with culture and more resources.
“What’s the use of having these high profile people sitting around in Williams Lake talking about crime problems and we’re not even at the table.”
Media was asked to leave the blue panel in Williams Lake meeting before it started Tuesday.