ASK Salt Spring: Answered - Ep 33 Sgt Clive Seabrook

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Ask Salt Spring Answered talks to RCMP Sgt. Clive Seabrook, detachment commander, about policing on Salt Spring.

Thank you. commanding officer of the RCMP division on Salt Spring Island about various matters with regards to the police detachment here. So I'm here with Sergeant Clive Seabrook who's the officer commanding the RCMP detachment on Salt Spring Island and we've just been in Ask Salt Spring and so Clive I think the first topic of conversation was you know how long are you gonna be here for you've been here for three and a half years and everybody wants you to stay longer yeah so my time my four years is up here in October of this year and so that'll be four years for me it

went very very quickly we are having some conversations now with headquarters about extending my time here. And there's more meetings supposed to be for about that in May of this year. So a couple of months from now, we'll have some idea. It looks like they may extend or at least open to the extension.

I just don't know what it's going to look like yet. My feeling is I'll be extended for another year and then we'll see how it goes. Can they keep on extending after that? I think so too. I think from a family point of view though it gets a bit tricky when you're trying to make plans with schooling and whatnot to have your plans one year at a time. I am a bit

of a five-year plan kind of a guy. Right yeah okay and we talked about how hard it is for policemen on Salt Spring and you said that it's not easy because when you're working you're quite often on call and you can't really relax and yeah so we have so when a member starts their block of shifts it's usually five days on occasion six and they'll work 10 hour shifts and sometimes those are days and sometimes they're evenings but when they're off shift they go on call which means when they're not at work, on patrol, they have a car at home and a uniform. And if a call, priority call comes in or, you know, there's always somebody working on the road, especially during the daytime hours. But if that person needs backup, then there must be some backup available to that officer. And so

there's always someone on call that can come out at a moment's notice. And so what gets to be challenging for the officer is he or she always has to be in a position where they're available to respond quickly. So they can't leave the island to go shopping, or even if they live in the north end of the island, for example, they can't go all the way down to Ruckel and be that far away from their police car. So that sort of gets a bit challenging. And, you know, over the years, that's a lot of sacrifice too from their family time and things like that. Right. And you said there's not enough officers for a 24-hour clock, and you would need four more to cover for that. Is there any chance of getting more officers on Salisbury? No. So people may have heard recently, about a year or so ago, the province announced funding to fill a certain number of positions in the province,

and so there was a criteria set out for that. At that time, all detachment commanders were invited to submit a rationale as to why they believed that their community would benefit from an additional police officer or additional resources. So Salt Spring, I did that on Salt Spring's behalf, and we're still waiting for those decisions to be made. So I think that that's starting now. It's obviously very complex to figure out exactly where those important resources are going to go. Okay, we did discuss briefly auxiliary police program possibilities. Yeah, so unfortunately, it was a tragic circumstance

where an auxiliary police officer was killed a number of years ago. And at that time, the program was canceled. And it had been looked at, you know, over the years. You know, I kind of feel like with COVID, like everything else, things got in the way. But now it's at a point where they've started to back up again now. And I do understand there were auxiliary police officers here quite a few years ago that volunteered their time. And so now that that program is officially up and running again detachment commanders will be invited to start up a program in their communities

if they feel they can do it so at some point here we're gonna have to have a conversation with the community about or at least see what the interest there is for people to volunteer in that program again so you know you're not law enforcement per se where you know you don't carry a sidearm, but you're still trained in use of force and security cleared. And you're just another voice. Quite often, for example, we go out for patrols quite regularly. So just to have another officer out in the community that people can talk to and approach and let us know what's going on or raise issues, just from that point of view,

I think it would be really advantageous if it can work. I know you're very happy with the ambassador program. Yeah, it's been fantastic. So, you know, again, something that's in its infancy, but yeah, really good. Yeah. Are they constantly back in touch with you guys about things that they're encountering?

Yeah, we have regular meetings. I know, unfortunately, I've missed a couple of meetings here and there. Like the last one, for example, I didn't have any intention of going to, but the radio went off and I had to go on a call right as it was happening. So unfortunately, I missed it. I do try and attend them all. There's a meeting that's held virtually, so it is an easy meeting to attend.

We have some local volunteers that are working with that. It has amazing support, and it's really really well ran by a core group of people and there's some very dedicated volunteers that are donating their time to it. I know we're looking for more volunteers to come out in the community and help us with that. But I think it's great. It's something that's being ran by the community so I think one really big benefit from that is it'll be a group of people that are salt springers. And as police officers transfer in and out, that will be a continuum where you'll have this core group of people that can have those connections remaining, introduce police officers to our different organizations and clients. And I think that's a nice thing to have that through the years. Right. a nice thing to have that through the years right what's what's your in your years that you've been

here what's what's made you most happy with the achievements that you've made since you've been here would you say yeah i think for us you know i when i arrived here and again it's difficult to comment on some of these because i'm just from my perspective which is really would not be the same as someone who was born and raised there but from my point of view and maybe that was something you that just historically how the policing went but was the ability that we were all able to get the community together and get the community support and address these issues you know so easy for the police to kind of be alone and you know the police are going to do this and the police can they're going to do that and for me to be able to have connections with the community and then you know as issues were identified,

the community came back to me and said, hey, we want to support you and work with you on this and help you be successful. So to me, that's one of my proud, but also just honored that the community had that confidence in me to really support all of the staff at the attachment. Because we have an amazing group of people there. The staff that work at the attachment are very, very dedicated, hardworking people. And they know that they have the support of the detachment because we have an amazing group of people there. The staff that work at the detachment are very, very dedicated,

hardworking people, and they know that they have the support of the community. If there's things that the community can help with, they know that they'll get that if it's a worthwhile cause. That's something that we don't always have as detachments, so we're very, very blessed to have that here with Salt Spring. Okay, thanks very much for coming in, and you've been listening to Ask Salt Spring Answered on cheer.fm, the voice of the Gulf Islands.

Thank you.