2008 Year In Review
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“Although we have enjoyed great success with the Crime Reduction Initiative the work does not stop here. In 2009/10 we will work with other justice, social service, and health agencies to continuing building a truly integrated justice system in British Columbia.”

Welcome to “E” Division’s 2008/09 edition of “Year in Review.” Once again it is a pleasure to reflect on the major accomplishments made by our members and employees towards a vision of British Columbia truly characterized by “Safe Homes, Safe Communities.”

The “E” Division Crime Reduction initiative continued to show success across several BC communities in 2008. We are now seeing the promising practices from early efforts in larger communities being adopted in some of our smaller communities across the province. We are building innovative partnerships with health and social service agencies which have resulted in timely interventions to support offenders who are making legitimate efforts to get their lives on track. We continue to work closely with justice and social service agency partners to ensure that the courts have a comprehensive information package before them at bail and sentencing hearings for those offenders who continue to offend. These efforts are driving down property crime rates throughout BC. Crime statistics from January September 2008 show that property crime rates across all of the communities policed by “E” Division fell over ten per cent from the same period in 2007. This is double the decrease from the previous year. We continue to invest resources in increasing the crime analysis function in several of our detachments. The exemplary work of our crime analysts has clearly demonstrated that focusing our resources on the right people in the right places at the right time will continue to lead to decreases in crime rates across the province. Over the past year representatives from several other jurisdictions in Canada have visited some of our crime reduction sites to learn more about how they can implement a similar approach in their communities.

Although we have enjoyed great success with the Crime Reduction Initiative the work does not stop here. In 2009/10 we will work with other justice, social service, and health agencies to continue building a truly integrated justice system in British Columbia. We will begin to explore integrated approaches to address the growing problem of street disorder in our communities. The implementation of the Provincial Community Safety Strategy will also provide opportunities to continue the work on evidence based approaches to crime reduction and prevention in several areas. Lastly as the initiative evolves we will continue to support the excellent public safety research work being done at ICURS.

The escalation and severity of gang violence across the Division continues to place significant pressures on our employees. The recent successes of the Project E Peseta and several other gang related arrests and charges, has clearly demonstrated to the general public our capacity to work in an integrated fashion to effectively address the impact of organized crime in our communities. Successes such as this do not come easily and are a true testament to the dedication and perseverance of all members and staff who work on these investigations.

Once again the hard work of all our members and employees throughout the Division has allowed us to set the standard across the country for innovative approaches to reducing crime in our communities. As we prepare to welcome the world in 2010 we should be proud of our progress thus far and I am sure that we will continue to build on these impressive results in 2009/10 in our aim to make BC homes and communities, the safest in the world.