The City of Grand Forks and local RCMP are finally a part of the City Watch program in British Columbia.
A collaboration between workers of the City of Grand Forks and the local RCMP detachment, City Watch aims to promote community safety through worker awareness.
Grand Forks RCMP Staff Sgt. Jim Harrison explained that he was approached a year ago to see if RCMP was willing to work with CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees) employees and their City Watch program.
“It’s a very similar program to (Citizens on Patrol),” said Harrison. “I joked in the meeting room where we were discussing how it would work, is that the last thing I want to see is one of the city workers chasing somebody down the road. They’re not vigilantes. They observe and they report.”
CUPE BC Vice-President Ian Norton noted City Watch is an extra set of eyes that are connected directly to dispatch.
“It actually started in Richmond, B.C. and took off from there,” Norton stated. “It fell off the wayside for a while but now it’s come back strong, and more and more communities have become involved in it.”
In Grand Forks, Norton stated there are 28 extra eyes that will be looking around.
Harrison agreed.
“The big beauty of it is that the workers are out in our community,” he said. “They’re out there during the day time and they know the community and they know when something looks suspicious or something looks strange. For the most part, most of the CUPE members live in our town, so there’s a sense of ownership there as well.”
Mike Noseworthy, facilities co-ordinator at the Grand Forks City Yard and president of CUPE Local 4728, said, “It’s a CUPE program and we’re all CUPE members. It’s been about a year now since we’ve started it and we are the 30th community in the province that has started it.”
After undergoing some training with RCMP a month ago, they were informed of what they were and were not able to do.
“I hope (City Watch) helps prevent people from doing things, rather than actually catching people in the act,” Noseworthy stated.
“It’s not just the cop cars that they have to look out for now, it’s 20 city vehicles that are out there at any time. The police service is limited so since we’re out there every day anyways it helps.”
The success of the program has already shown.
Prior to the official launch of City Watch, a city worker noticed a break-and-enter at a resident’s home behind Tastie Treat.
“The great part was that the CUPE member was operating a sidewalk cleaner and watched our suspect run away and he told us exactly where he was,” recalled Harrison. “He told us that he was wearing a black hoodie, black pants and he was holding a backpack. None of the other witnesses told us about the backpack but we caught him a block away and he didn’t have a backpack.”
After searching for the backpack, Harrison noticed a red backpack sitting on someone’s driveway.
“I went and asked the owner of the house if this was their backpack and he said it wasn’t his,” said Harrison.
“The backpack was full of stolen copper wires. This is a perfect example of how this works.”