The number of constables on the RCMP's Downtown Enforcement Unit (DEU) has been cut in half, and the two who remain are sharing their time with the city's drug squad.
These are only temporary seasonal measures, according to the police officer in charge of the unit, Cpl. Kent MacNeill.
The other two constables have been reassigned to spots on the general duty watches (there are four watches that rotate through the city's police schedule).
"We have seen a huge change in the criminal activities happening in the downtown," said MacNeill. "There is a drastically reduced number of calls for service, so there is less need for the same number of members, and it alleviates some stresses on the short-staffed watches during the winter.
"We will reassess in spring. If need be we can bring the numbers back up.
"It is a flexible decision."
The move follows an unsuccessful plea from Prince George commanding officer Supt. Eric Stubbs (currently unavailable due to time off) to city council asking for more officers for the watches.
He said at a public meeting
Oct. 24 that the DEU was occupying members who could best be used elsewhere. Council said no, the watches would have to make due as the DEU was to remain a civic priority. His presentation included the scenario of a reduction in staff as a possibility, if the extra funding could not be given.
MacNeill was asked if this move might look like the RCMP just doing what it wanted from the start.
"That was not the intention at all. It was a decision made by a number of people for a number of reasons," he said.
"Right now it is a simple case of resources going to the places needed, and it is flexible. Council made it clear that they wanted the unit to remain, and it does, with as much resources as needed. In spring we will look at a full compliment of members again, if needed, but right now, because of the weather, it is not needed."
According to MacNeill, the people who would normally occupy the unit's time downtown are few, because of the winter weather. Even rainy weather causes a drop in their calls for service, he explained, and every winter it tails off.
"Our one commitment is the downtown core, we just use our time wisely," he said.
"We still take care of the downtown as our duties state, but in quieter moments we can do things like help out the drug section on their projects. They are interconnected anyway. The people we target in the downtown core are highly interconnected with the work the drug section is doing."
MacNeill said that the DEU was not confined just to the business core, but worked all the way into the VLA neighbourhood, especially with crackshacks and the vagrancy around liquor stores nearest the downtown.
