Dawn of the Dead

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Cop-Shop Deluxe
20 Jan. 2015
introduces the following. 

Focus of the Nelson Police Department's (NPD) Provisional Budget 2015 (PB) presented to Council, Oct. 2014, is on a requested budget-increase of $311.000 - largely to be used for hiring 2 constables and 1 admin coordinator.

There are 2 - clearly different - versions of this budget-proposal: a written and a verbal.

Written
The stated reasons behind additional hiring are NOT increase in mental-illness calls, drugs and street-disorder! Car 87 does NOT enter! Adding personnel oddly aims at in-house attitude-changes and convenience only!
Under WHAT WOULD THAT INCREASE ALLOW US TO DO? - a list of general strategies, almost verbatim lifted from a book (is this legal?) recently published at the coast: these strategies have no bearing on our NPD-declared mental-health crisis - on Nelson's hands-on policing-work right now - period.
311K for that?
Seriously?
The written version is the one currently on record.

Mind you - something positive: #6 and 7 would allow the NPD to become proactive and accountable. Which - ones surmises - they haven't been allowed to be thus far.

 
Verbal
In the verbal presentation to Council the above 7 reasons/justifications as such are not mentioned. Here the need for additional personnel is backed by endless statistics and comparisons between Nelson and other places. The way the NPD usually reasons/justifies: making itself seem stretched to its limits and spiraling off into exceptionalism.
The presentation lacks hard facts, figures directly pertaining to a coherent-cohesive game-plan for the coming year!

Neither - Nor
Seemingly - the NPD and Nelson Police Board (NPB) have realized that this neither-here-nor-there budget will never fly. That - in fact - they may end-up with very little approved in the final version - by Police Act having to be locked-in in 1 month. Now Police Chief Holland's narrative - not including the 311K any longer! - is an attempt to gain sympathy for the NPD's fumbled pitches. With: the answer to steeply rising numbers of mentally ill arriving in Nelson can only be 1 (cure-all/save-all) Car 87! Handled!

It will be interesting to learn what the definitive budget is based on. Seeing that this car - already once rejected by Council - is not part of the PB! And surely 311K for non-essential hiring are out!

If the increase in hordes of mentally disturbed - roaming the streets drugged and disorderly - is as dramatic as lately claimed by Holland in the Nelson Star and on the CBC: 1 car with 1 cop and 1 psych nurse - having to cover the whole town and that impossibly 24/7 - surely couldn't stem the looming DAWN OF THE DEAD-at-the-mall onslaught!

Neither could 2 additional cops - although theoretically  useful as a visible police-presence downtownish. Where supposedly much drugged mental illness plays-out. I wouldn't know. Although downtown almost daily - I haven't witnessed any of that. Anyway - a police-presence downtown has not been part of any plan.
Neither has non-physical first-responder conflict-intervention/resolution training. Which should have been a no-brainer since an increase of mentals was first noticed by the NPD. Cross-training for all cops: immediately effective/affective as part of a cop's job anywhere at any time. And relatively cheap - but no!

 Either - Or
 According to Holland, our multitudes of THEM are (practically overnight!) the largest in BC - along with those in the Vancouver Eastside. Depending on who at the NPD is talking: the increase in January has been either by 62% or doubled over the previous January. While recently Holland talked about approximately 1.000 mental illness calls per year - he now says for the 5th year in a row the police are dealing with more mental health calls. The NPD's communication is consistently disjointed, has been all along since before the PB.

There has been no report in the Star of mental incidents for days.

Yes, often the problematics feel drawn to Nelson - advertised as land of good dope and gluten-free tree-hugging hippies. As rumored: even nudged in this direction by relevant agencies elsewhere. This influx brought-up in Holland's CBC interview. Yet when Chris Walker asks him whether he has raised the issue with the local MLA - certainly the way to go - Holland sidesteps an answer with: all politicians know. Proactive?

The narrative of the NPD's attempts at damage-control is getting shriller. Changes in emphasis and volume must make the public wonder why there is little cohesion, continuity in all this. Ultimately raising questions around vision, legitimacy of claims and - yes - accountability.
All this whingeing!

Mayor Kozak inherited this muddle from John Dooley, her predecessor as NPB Chair. She - quite rightly - says: mental health now is a world-wide issue - NOT Kootenay-specific.

So, Chief Holland, how about letting go of the exceptionalism-perspective to dispassionately accept the local situation-as-actually-is and within a proactive and accountable - thus supportable - step forward.