The Delta Police Department is taking steps to enhance its community police stations but it won’t be extending their hours.
A community police station review was presented to the Delta police board at its regular meeting on Wednesday.
Last spring, the board requested a review of the stations’ hours of operation.
Several board members expressed concerns at that time that the stations not being open on weekends was a disservice to the public and that a lack of volunteers might even necessitate the need for possibly closing them altogether.
Police Chief Neil Dubord said the review included an assessment of the current model and offered recommendations for improving services to the community.
“There are about 40 recommendations contained in the review that focus on three areas, which include training, recruitment and program development,” said Dubord. “There is strong research to suggest that the old way of delivering community police services was to open up the front door and people would just come into that facility and engage with the police that way and some people still do, however, the strong research is that we need to push our outreach into the community.”
Dubord said these outreach efforts include programs like Block Watch, Cell Watch, Speed Watch, which he called “success stories.”
Dubord added that during the past year all community stations have either moved or are in the process of moving to higher visibility locations.
He said the impact on the amount of activity in the Tsawwassen office was significant after it moved to the breezeway at Tsawwassen Town Centre Mall.
The Ladner office will be moving into the historic museum building on Delta Street at the end of February and the North Delta office will be moving from inside Scottsdale Centre to a storefront location on Scott Road.
He said these changes will enhance visibility and increase public awareness.
“We will also have the storefronts open during special events such as Ladner (Village) Markets and Tsawwassen Sun Festival for an added layer of visibility and community outreach,” Dubord added.
“A strong programming model will naturally attract more volunteers, which in turn may create the ability to increase office hours, however at this time storefront hours will remain at current levels.”
Hari Aroon was the lone board member to vote against the report.
“When we started this the primary reason for bringing this up was to see how we could extend or change the hours that would include some on weekends. This recommendation does not touch that, therefore I will not be endorsing this recommendation, I will vote against it,” said Aroon. “To me, that was the primary reason why we asked for this review.”
