Weighing in on RCMP cuts

Photo: Castanet Staff

Last week Castanet asked readers what they thought about the BC government announcing cuts to the RCMP budget. 

The province recently said it will cut the RCMP's budget for 2015 by $4.2 million. Their total budget for 2014 was $360 million, an $8 million increase over 2013.

This comes after government reports that crime is at its lowest point in decades, with total violent offences lower in 2012 than they were in 2003. 

However, many readers disagreed with the cuts. Here are some of their letters:

Dion Arnouse wrote: 

I was quite shocked to hear about the budget cut given the proliferation of organized crime groups in BC.

If anything, I expected to hear about an increase in budget and resources to help these departments in protecting our communities and more importantly our children from the negative impacts of organized crime.

The industry development coming to BC also means some potential negative impacts to our society, look south of the border to the dramatic increase in drug trafficking in areas where there is major industry development.

We tend to forget that the future client base for organized crime is the young children in our schools we have a responsibility to protect them and to also once and for all take a zero tolerance approach to org crime in BC and Canada, it could only result in good things, don’t you think??

Joe Mroz: 

How is it, every time our governments need to save money, they make cuts in policing, education and medical?

At what point do the people start demanding cuts in the bureaucracy, their wages, benefits, pensions and the total number of people doing a certain job? 

It's time to start demanding something for the ridiculous amount of money we Canadians spend on taxes. Every year we pay more and more and get less and less.  

Justin Trevor thought the cuts were made to the wrong parts of the RCMP:

By all means, let's apply the cuts to the Major Crimes division and reduce the force by 13 full time investigators while staffing the Kelowna bridge with enough traffic cops to invade a small nation.  

Let's dare not reduce the number of officers doing liquor pour-outs on our beaches when we can cut the guys working on unsolved homicides and missing persons.

The Ministry of Justice and the RCMP can't figure how they've lost the public trust. Really? This latest move is disgusting.