A bad year for criminals has resulted in good news for two North Okanagan organizations.
The Vernon Women’s Transition House Society and the Vernon-North Okanagan RCMP will receive provincial grant money from the Civil Forfeiture Fund where money is used to help organizations working on crime prevention and victims of crime.
“It’s money seized from criminals,” said Vernon-Monashee MLA Eric Foster in making the grant announcements Monday morning at the Vernon-North Okanagan RCMP detachment.
“Civil forfeiture does not come into effect until the Mounties have done their good work, resulting in a conviction. Anything such as cars, boats, planes or houses that criminals have used as part of their criminal activity can be seized, and the money from the seizure is used to fund the Civil Forfeiture department.”
Any additional monies are then put into grants and this year, the provincial government has more than $5 million to give out.
Foster announced that the Vernon Women’s Transition House Society will receive three grants totalling $35,600.
The biggest grant is for $25,600 which will help establish a North Okanagan child advocacy centre to help child victims of physical and sexual abuse.
“The concept behind the centre is to have a single entry location where kids or youth and their families can go so they don’t have to go from pillar to post seeking services or lining up appointments to have interviews taken,” said Debby Hamilton, executive director of the transition house society.
“Perhaps it will reduce the number of interviews children have to be submitted to once they have been abused.”
The grant is seed money for the centre.
“We’re going to establish relationships and written protocol, then hopefully spring on to something bigger,” said Hamilton, adding that she hopes the protocol and terms of reference for the centre will be completed by September, and that a physical location will be announced between September and December.
The transition house society also received grants of $5,000 to help coordinate the cross-sector response to the highest risk domestic violence cases, and for the VIP (Violence Is Preventable) program introduced in schools.
The Vernon-North Okanagan RCMP will receive a grant for $8,900 to purchase surveillance equipment and training for two officers in connection with North Okanagan grow-ops.
As far as detachment Supt. Reg Burgess is concerned, using proceeds from crime to support victims of crime and for crime reduction and enforcement is a very appropriate use of funds.
“I’d like to go after a bigger chunk,” smiled Burgess, who explained that the equipment will help fill a gap in local grow-op investigations linked to organized crime that have moved into rural locations.
“The equipment and training will give up the capacity to do surveillance to gather evidence and bust those grows, which is very difficult to do. In a rural setting, everybody knows everybody in a smaller community, and to do surveillance in a small town is very difficult. If you’re a stranger, you’re a stranger.”
