Friday December 12, 2025 | LANGFORD, BC [Posted at 3:13 pm]
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
A Community Information Session on Police & Public Safety Planning and Resourcing in the west shore was held in Langford for two hours on Tuesday evening.
The December 9 session was attended at the Langford Business Centre by about 80 people including City of Langford senior staff and several Councillors: Colby Hardy (as acting mayor), Mark Morley, Mary Wagner and Keith Yacucha.
Mayors and councillors from across the area policed by the West Shore RCMP had already attended a separate session just for the governance level. The December 9 session was to receive some public input in a professional setting but a scenario less formal than Council Chambers.
It wasn’t quite a ‘town hall’ but it did give a few Langford residents and others a chance to inject some fresh queries into the subject matter of staffing and funding policing services in the west shore.
The West Shore RCMP service area includes Langford, Colwood, View Royal, Highlands, Metchosin and two First Nations: Songhees and Esquimalt.
Speakers / consultants:
There were two speakers for the entire evening, both of whom are consultants who have shifted their careers from previous work in policing and public administration: Kara Triancea is a retired RCMP Superintendent in Charge and James Ridge has held senior staff positions in muniicipal government and post-secondary.
- Kara Triancea – Kara Triance Consulting Inc.” – Triancea retired earlier this year from her role as Officer in Charge of the Kelowna/Central Okanagan RCMP. That one was one of the busiest detachments in BC and under Triancea’s leadership it became the largest RCMP detachment in Canada.Her 25-year policing career planned all four district of the BC RCMP both in major cities and remote rural communities.
- James Ridge – James Ridge Consulting: Ridge has been City Manager for Burlington (in Ontario), Deputy City Manager with the City of Vancouver, and CAO of the District of North Vancouver. He has also been the Associate Vice-President and Registrar at the University of British Columbia and founding principal of UBC”s Vantage Collage. He was a senior manager in provincial government. Ridge’s policing interest comes from having been a Major in the Canadian Armed Forces Military Police where he was responsible for police operations in the air force.
This small team is proposed to guide the process by which five west shore municipalities will rely for being informed about ‘validated’ public opinion through a process that differs substantially from the open public engagement process that the City of Langford (and the City of Colwood to some extent) has been using by way of surveys and open houses (aka ‘idea fairs’).
Triancea and Ridge authored the report that was provided to the west shore municipalities and the public, called Public Safety and Police Resourcing – a Proposed approach for the Communities Served by the West Shore RCMP. That report was commissioned by the City of Langford.
While there was information delivered about ‘process’, the evening was essential a sales pitch as to how west shore municipal councils will be engaging the consulting team and their process of determining what is intended to be unbiased and demographically balanced.
A lot of this effort and expense to be borne by taxpayers is in part to get around heated — perhaps uninformed — opinion and political attack from some factions of the community.
Survey process:
The evening presentation was something of checking off the public approval aspect of proceeding with a process that will rely mostly on a phone-call type of public survey seeking to sleuth out participants from within a range of ages, income levels, education levels and regional demographics.
The consultants have already engaged with the new incoming West Shore RCMP Superintendent Terry Gillespie and has met with the municipal councils and staff.
Assessing best practices:
It seems that the main consideration for councils in the funding of police services is to balance what is now an emerging two-track set of needs: on-the-street police presence and desk-work on files that work the online angles of crime.
How should a mayor and council balance the need for both those areas of policing in terms of the ultimate number of police officers (which cost about $200,000 per year, all in).
The presenters tried to strongly reinforce that ‘cop to pop’ (a direct ratio of officers to population) should not be used exclusively for determining how many police officers a municipality should have. Apparently Langford is among few cities that following that formula, according to the consultants.
An ongoing assessment of municipal investment in policing should, it was suggested, include on-street/community public safety and the growing issue of online/cyber-crime including fraud and sextortion.
Policing complement decision-making would need to include active crime incidents, security, crime rate, population impacts (ratios), officer workload, population growth, technology, training, and the cost of living.
Definitions:
The audience was presented with a slide that presented some basic definitions:
- Reported crime or crime rates are incidents of crime that are reported to *or detected by] the police. This data is collected by the police.
- Victimization rates are the actual incidence of crime, which includes crime reported to the police and crime not reported to the police.
- Crime severity is a nationally-used measure of the seriousness of the crime.
Resource plan:
The cost of both police officers and firefighters must be balanced in the budget decision-making process by council.
The consultants propose that councils begin their decision-making from a position of knowing what is actually happening in their community — including demographic changes and crime changes.
The consultants propose that a policing resource plan should include:
- Community safety plan; involve police in development of the plan.
- Current authorized strength of the detachment with enough officers to meet mandated responsibilities.
- Call volume and type: call volume is up (by percent) and the mix of top five calls for service has changed.
- Crime severity is changing: requires new police resources.
- Caseload: West Shore RCMP officers are carrying a case load that is higher than the average RCMP detachment, and higher than the provincial average.
- Policing complexity: Technological advances, digital disclosure requirements, evolving case law (e.g. R v Jordan, R v Marakah, body-worn cameras) have dramatically increased investigative and administrative workloads.
- Risk to public safety: under resourcing limites the ability to respond to critical incidents, manage overtime sustainability, and maintain proactive policy.
- Stagnant or growth of staffing levels.The effective population served has grown over the years, including permanent residents, seasonal residents and visitors.
West shore needs and focus:
Most if not all of their statistical and anecdotal examples were for communities outside of the west shore if not the Greater Victoria area. Arguably, there is no place like the west shore in terms of history, growth patterns, geography, political impositions by the regional government (CRD), and cultural lifestyle expectations.
There is something to be said for bringing in outside consultants (presumably a level of non-bias), but that may not fit for Langford, Colwood, Metchosin and View Royal where there are stark distinctions in lifestyle, income levels and political directions. Without a direct connection to the flavour of community in the west shore, the results from phone call survey data may not really fit. If there are focus groups, who chooses the composition of those groups?
Ahead of the meeting, the City of Langford said the purpose of bringing in these consultants is to ensure that policing resources align with community needs and residents’ lived experiences.
Audience input:
Questions from the audience on Tuesday evening included issues related to population growth, the sense of safety in public spaces including downtown and trails, road safety, and addressing the needs of youth regionally.
Concerns expressed by Langford residents in the audience included:
- The cost of the extensive engagement of this current policing restructuring process
- That the consultants should not talk about the “perception” of safety among the public (which implies a bias that the police and bylaw are doing enough despite how people might feel).
- That people will avoid what they perceive to be unsafe spaces, and police/bylaw/City should not assume that it means they are doing enough. There is a need to do more on-street patrols, it was suggested by a former police officer who lives in Langford.
- A high level of bicycle theft was highlight by one Langford resident.
- One of the audience members suggested that relying on surveys by phone is unreliable. Many if not most people will not pick up a call on their cell phone if they don’t recognize the number. Few people have landline phones anymore. [The consultants conceded that it does take longer to reach ‘the right people’ now that people are primarily using cell phones; this would add to survey/consulting costs.]
- “Every Langford resident would want to take some ownership of this issue,” said one participant. A survey that prioritizes certain data analysis standards (e.g. a range of demographics) that chooses to include some participants and deliberately exclude others seems contrived and inauthentic.
- A community safety survey should be done, including being sent to property owners by way of an insert in their property tax notices. [Editor’s note: Langford’s substantial population of renters should not be overlooked — that should should covered by door-to-door flyer delivery.
Next steps:
The City of Langford has this week just begun a process of formulating Budget 2026.
There will be a “community dialogue around public safety”, said Acting Mayor Colby Harder at Tuesday night’s meeting. The methodology of that has yet to be confirmed, but the City will be “making decision in the best way possible”, said Harder.
The proposed process was presented by the consultants as:
- Community safety survey
- Develop a community safety plan
- Set the annual RCMP budget
- Evaluate outcomes and police KPIS
===== RELATED:
- Three municipalities get CRD loan to upgrade West Shore RCMP building (November 27, 2025)
- West Shore RCMP announces new Officer in Charge (November 22, 2025)
- NEWS SECTIONS: LANGFORD | WEST SHORE RCMP | WEST SHORE LOCAL