Pandemic's effects on staffing have meant far fewer traffic tickets in recent months, police say

Photo: Castanet Staff

Enforcement of traffic infractions on Kamloops streets has taken a big dip in recent months, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is to blame.

That’s what RCMP Supt. Syd Lecky said last week while addressing the city’s community safety committee.

Lecky said the detachment’s traffic section was down to just two officers for much of the first quarter of 2021. Enforcement was down more than 50 per cent, he said — 111 total offences in the first quarter of 2021 compared to 273 over the same period in 2020.

“We were working with very limited staff in our traffic section, so our traffic stats had declined significantly,” Lecky said.

“You will recall there were some limitations in how we were not exposing unnecessarily some of our traffic members to the clientele.”

Lecky said while there were no COVID-19 outbreaks among city police officers, the detachment did deal with a number of exposure events that resulted in necessary time off.

“We did have some scares where people were exposed,” he said.

“When you’re exposed, you have to be off for two weeks, and there were a number of those — less so recently because we have been getting vaccinated, but certainly during the first quarter and into last year, we had quite a few of those that did impact our frontlines.”

In the first quarter of this year, Lecky said, Kamloops Mounties busted 13 drunk drivers, compared to 56 over the same period in 2020. He said 48 intersection tickets were handed out last quarter, compared to 121 the previous year, while 50 distracted driving tickets were written — about half of the 96 handed out over the same time in 2020.

Lecky said he doesn't think the dip will last long.

“I’m happy to tell you that the next report will be the complete opposite,” he told the committee. “We have been able to get our traffic members back up and running.”