Rivers Police Service to patrol all of Riverdale

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This article was published 23/12/2017 (3088 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Riverdale Municipality has decided to keep the Rivers Police Service on the case.

By council resolution, the municipality chose this month to expand the coverage area of the Rivers Police Service to the entire municipality instead of solely the community of Rivers.

The RCMP will no longer patrol the municipality’s rural areas, as of Jan. 1, 2018.

Council’s decision is a byproduct of the forced amalgamation of Manitoba’s smallest municipalities. Legislation requires municipalities be policed by a singular force.

The province, however, granted its two contravening municipalities a five-year grace period following amalgamation to decide on its singular police force, which must be installed by January 2020.

The Municipality of Rhineland, southwest of Winnipeg, is now the lone jurisdiction that has not made a decision.

Riverdale Mayor Todd Gill said the municipality has been aware they would have to choose one police detachment for around four years.

“I knew then that it would come to this, but I didn’t know what day,” explained Gill, considering the private detachment in operation since 1913 the favourite from a beginning.

Through three public consultations, the municipality gathered that urban and rural residents felt the same way.

Riverdale council must still determine the method of taxation to pay the extra $100,000 to the detachment’s total budget, currently estimated at $330,000.

Early in 2018, council will present a special service levy bylaw for the community’s consideration.

Gill expects the proposal to ask urban residents to pay marginally less than the $530 per year per property they’re accustomed to, while rural properties are valued at $135-140/year and suburban properties at $180/year.

Those figures are subject to change, he said.

“We’ve tried to develop a service, and a fee for that service, that may be considered palatable,” Gill said.

“Rural people are not accustomed to seeing a line item on their municipal taxes that speaks to police service.”

The type of service residents anticipate explains the pricing divide between urban and rural ratepayers.

The Rivers Police Service will be proactive fighting crime in Rivers, while its stance is reactive in the rest of Riverdale, the former RM of Daly.

“We hope to provide as good of service as the RCMP has provided in the past, possibly a better response time,” Gill said.

He said council wanted to make a decision long before the province’s deadline to ensure the Rivers Police Service wouldn’t worry about its future for long, which might have affected staff retention and recruitment efforts.

For Rivers Police Service Chief Bruce Klassen, council’s decision is a vote of confidence.

“The RCMP has done a tremendous job of policing the rural area over the years, so we have big boots to fill,” he said, “but we will work hard and diligently toward gaining the rural area’s trust.”

He explained the detachment would endure a learning curve as they learn their larger jurisdiction, an additional 560 square kilometres.

To police the large area, Brittney Roque, a casual member of the force, has been promoted to full-time. As of January, the detachment will employ four full-timers, one casual and six auxiliary members.

In 2016, the detachment responded to 822 calls for service and generated 250 cases as a result.

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