Langley City mayor Ted Schaffer said the municipality pushed to have an officer “walking or cycling” a beat downtown during a confidential meeting with a top RCMP officer from the regional division headquarters.
Schaffer said having an officer on the street full-time “would create a great deterrent.”
The mayor described the Tuesday (June 26) meeting as a positive discussion with a senior, unnamed, officer who appeared receptive.
“He (the officer) was very open,” Schaffer said.
“He took a couple pages of notes.”
The City mayor also told the Mountie the municipality would like to see more crackdowns on speeding, like the one that targeted scofflaw drivers near a park with a children’s playground, and it would like to see more attention devoted to petty crimes that do not pose a physical threat to residents but are still concerning.
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“I’m very happy with the RCMP,” Schaffer stressed.
“They do work very hard.”
Schaffer said the city devotes about 45 per cent of its annual taxation budget to the RCMP, which he said is one of the highest percentages of any Canadian municipality.
“Police is very expensive for our community,” Schaffer said.
READ MORE: Langley City council opposes government move on traffic fine sharing
Crime figures from Statistics Canada show the City has a higher per capita crime rate than the provincial average.
Incident-based crime statistics for 2016 show Langley City averaged 19.6 incidents per 100 people, compared to a provincial average of 8.7 and a Township average of 8.5.
Langley RCMP crime analysts have said the higher City numbers are the result of property crime, not violence.
An RCMP review identified the area between the blocks of 203 Street and 204 Street, from Army & Navy South to 53 Avenue, and the area between 201 Street and 203 Street from Fraser Highway down to 56 Avenue as places where petty crime was more prevalent.
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