The local context: Case study background

Policing services across British Columbia are administered by four different organizations - the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) provincial force, independent municipal forces, RCMP municipal forces, and First Nations Administered Police Services.

Each force provides yearly reports to the provincial government, which include crime rates, police strength, and total operational costs. This information is collected and compiled to

provide an overview of the operations of each police force, and allows for documentation of intra-force changes over years. However, there is considerable variation in the organizational structures and operational costs among police forces that must be considered when making comparisons between forces based on police strength, costs and population (Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, 2015). This is particularly important when comparing different types of forces – while similarly sized RCMP municipal forces may have similar (though not identical) organizational structures, RCMP and independent forces – even those serving similar sized areas – operate under significantly different frameworks.

The ratio of population per officer is a commonly used statistic that can help provide a proxy measure of the police service levels within each municipality. This ratio is calculated by dividing the reported population for each municipality by the reported police strength for a given year. Police strength generally includes both sworn regular and civilian members, but for the purposes of this study, does not include non-sworn civilian support staff or special integrated task force members. Populations for each municipality are adapted and projected from the Canadian Census, which is taken every 5 years – most recently in 2011 (Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, 2015).

Table 6 displays the municipal populations and police strength for Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam for the first year of this study (2008), as well as for the most recently available year (2014)¹³. This table provides an overall population per officer ratio for general comparative purposes. In addition, it includes the total and average reported figures for municipalities served by RCMP municipal forces (above and below 15,000) and independent police forces. Note that both Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam fall into the sub-category of RCMP Municipal Forces serving communities over 15,000.

13 In 2014, police strength was reported as both authorized and adjusted strength, which increases the resource counts for municipalities such as Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam based on their contribution to and access to integrated regional policing teams. While the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General calculates population per officer measures based on

adjusted strength, Table 6 adjusts this calculation to omit the integrated team contributions to be more consistent with the methods of reporting 2008 resourcing statistics. When considering adjusted police strength, all 2014 population per officer ratios drop; however, Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam’s measure remains considerably higher than the provincial averages.

Table 6: Police strength by municipality and detachment type, 2008 and 2014. Adapted from Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, 2009, 2015.

Municipality  2008 

Coquitlam  121,479  142 855 141,179 152  929

Port Coquitlam   55,589  64 869 59,819 67  893

Combined: 

Coquitlam and  Port Coquitlam 

177,067  206 860 200,998 219  918

Total/Average: 

RCMP Forces  over 15,000 

2,126,968  2,745 775 2,390,133 3,036  787

Total/Average: 

RCMP Forces  5,000 ‐ 15,000 

294,073  429 685 295,564 432  684

Total/Average: 

Independent  Municipal Police  Forces 

1,247,344  2,294 544 1,286,838 2,413  533

The population per officer ratios are provided at the municipal level. Municipal boundaries do not always match with the police jurisdictional boundaries. Indeed, this is the case with the Coquitlam Detachment, made up of Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, and two additional smaller communities. The combined population per officer ratio for Coquitlam Detachment was 860 in 2008, and has risen to 918 in 2014. The comparable ratio for other similarly-sized urban centres served by municipal RCMP forces is significantly lower, at 775 in 2008, and 787 in 2014. While there are certainly a number of additional factors that warrant consideration, such as variations in human resources and support services, this indicates that in 2008 the Coquitlam RCMP Detachment had proportionally fewer officers available to meet the policing needs of the community, and that this shortage continued in 2014.

While the population per officer ratio provides information about the police service levels within a given municipality, additional information can provide a more complete understanding of community safety and policing needs. Further complicating the comparisons, population measures alone are not able to account for how land within the municipalities is actually used. This concept is particularly relevant in areas where

downtown centres and activity hubs attract visitors and out-of-city residents for employment and entertainment purposes (Andresen and Jenion, 2010; Andresen, 2011;

Malleson and Andresen, 2015a). From a local perspective, research focusing on Coquitlam and surrounding areas has found that the city’s town centre area acts as an important directional attractor for offenders in a number of neighbouring communities and policing jurisdictions (Frank et al., 2013). Additional research on home locations of police contacts within Coquitlam Detachment illustrates the considerable number of interactions associated with individuals residing out of the jurisdictional boundaries (Wuschke, 2011).

When considered in conjunction with the comparably high population per officer ratio of Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam, these findings further illustrate a detachment-level need to explore alternative police resourcing metrics. As emphasized within existing research, the known connections between the built environment, crime and disorder may provide an alternative framework for measuring the local need for police resources.

Crime trends in Coquitlam Detachment: Crimes by environmental feature A wide body of academic literature emphasizes the important links between land use, urban design and criminal events. As illustrated within the geometry of crime theory, physical structures within the urban environment have long been found to impact the location, type and volume of local crime and disorder events. The specific relationship between urban features and crime vary from location to location, and while a number of generalizations can be recognized in many urban communities, this relationship is best understood at a local level.

Previous research focusing on Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam has identified several key local features that are associated with higher proportions of crime (Chapter 2, Chapter 3). At the macro level, arterial roads, properties designated as commercial, and those labelled as civic, institutional and recreational (CIR) have higher concentrations of crime events on site. When moving to a meso resolution, the regional and community shopping malls dominate the commercial land use category, while recreation and cultural centres, hospitals and schools drive the crime concentrations within CIR land uses. Moving to a still finer resolution, the importance of arterial roads and shopping malls is again emphasized, as the top blocks and single addresses with highest counts of crime fall into these classifications (Chapter 2). Crime events continue to concentrate in the micro-spaces

immediately beyond each of these local features of interest as well, with these large spatial scale patterns varying according to feature type (Chapter 3). This local context emphasizes the importance of built environmental features in shaping the distribution of crime and disorder events within Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam. The existing relationships between crime and such local features may be useful measures to inform potential crime patterns and resource needs as the cities continue to develop and densify.