Police called to Penticton's supportive housing projects 231 times in first quarter of 2021

Photo: Castanet Staff

UPDATED: May 5

Penticton RCMP released a correction to recently provided crime statistics data presented to city council on Tuesday.

Supt. Brian Hunter provided quarterly crime statistics as they related to the city’s supportive housing facilities that were incorrect due to a human error. The number of files generated for each address was inadvertently doubled.

All of the other statistics presented to council were not effected and are accurate, according to the RCMP release.

In an effort to amend these numbers, the following is the updated calls for service related to each facility for the first quarter of 2021:

• Victory Church: 145
• Compass Court: 55
• Burdock House: 22
• Fairhaven: 9

“The accuracy of statistics presented to the community is of the utmost importance to me. I take responsibility for this error and apologize for any issues it may have caused," Supt. Brian Hunter stated in a press release.

ORIGINAL: May 4, 2:15 p.m.

The commanding officer of the RCMP in the South Okanagan outlined the number of times officers responded to supportive housing projects in Penticton during Tuesday's council meeting.

Supt. Brian Hunter said RCMP were called to the old Victory Church 290 times, to Compass court 110 times, to Burdock House 45 times and to the Fairhaven 19 times in the first quarter of 2021.

These numbers do not include the surrounding area and community, just calls directly at each shelter.

Regardless, Hunter said a new proposed housing project planned for Skaha Lake Road is a good step forward.

“We know that addiction can be the root cause of a lot of crime, if we can get the help that they need to get out of that routine, crime will go down,” Hunter explained.

“I’m happy to report that just last week I believe we now have a dedicated addiction nurse for the detachment. This person is dedicated to the detachment and will attend with RCMP officers.”

Coun. Campbell Watt questioned if any other areas of the city see a similar number of calls as the supportive housing projects.

“There are no other areas that can compete with that number of calls in our community,” Hunter responded. “As the police, if we have a residence that's a problem, it's going to see some attention from the police along with the city”.

“We don't follow different rules because it's a shelter, but certainly you have 42 beds in there, housing our most vulnerable residents.”

Hunter added that the RCMP continue to monitor the shelters and activity going on in the community relating to it.

Editors note: A previous version of this story said there were 105 responses made to Burdock House, when in fact, there was 45.