There are no pictures on the walls of his office yet, but the schedule is already filling up for the city's new top cop.
RCMP Supt. Eric Stubbs was named this spring as the successor to Supt. Brenda Butterworth-Carr after she was promoted to chief superintendent in charge of Canada's aboriginal policing programs.
Stubbs was greeted in a Tuesday evening reception involving dozens of the stakeholder groups and agencies he will naturally cross paths with.
"I am doing a lot of listening right now," he said Wednesday.
In addition to the intervention into the lives of criminals, and the prevention of crime with community partners, Stubbs will have another major challenge as big as a city block.
The city's new RCMP detachment was negotiated through by several commanding officers and city councils before Stubbs arrived, but it is now under construction and he will be the one to transition the local force over to the new facility.
He has to hold the fort in the current building for the couple of remaining years, and establish operations in a new location when time comes.
"It won't be seamless," he cautioned, and said the process would take several carefully planned months taking into account the need to never disrupt the flow of public protection.
Those practical concerns notwithstanding, "obviously we are thrilled to see the progress on the building site, it is obvious to me that it is a desperately needed building, and it is great to see the level of support to make that commitment. We are looking forward to the move."
Stubbs was commander of the detachment in Terrace, and prior to that was posted to Haida Gwaii and Mackenzie detachments.
He is a certified specialist in VIP-involved situations, and is one of few Emergency Response Team commanders in the north.
He has spent the past 10 years in northern B.C. and said he was familiar with Prince George before he got the job.
"There are a lot of resources in this town, in terms of agencies working to help social conditions here, and their goal is to help make this a better community and help those in need, so we have a lot in common with them," he said.
He has already heard a lot of praise for RCMP initiatives like the Downtown Enforcement Unit, the Crime Reduction Team, and the Community Policing Centre.
He said he had no incoming agenda of his own other than the RCMP's cross-Canada police programming and that was already well underway here.
"The focus of crime reduction [the RCMP's term for emphasizing prolific offenders] is something the RCMP has embraced across the country," he said.
"A community's police service is a catch basin for everything. Do you work on jaywalking and littering or do you focus on organized crime and violence? You're going to get some of everything, you have to do it all, but what are the priorities in this community? You have to work to decide what the focus is going to be."
Less than two weeks with a Prince George address and he has already seen an early frontrunner in the priority contest.
"Guns," he said. "The amount of illegal gun activity here is a bit of a surprise," listing five incidents off the top of his head of drive-by shootings, firearm brandishing, and weapons seizures.
This is a frightening reality for police attending to this criminal element, and for the public in general, he said, and is symptomatic of the drug-soaked organized crime industry.
Stubbs's knew his duties would involve attending to many boards and partner groups in keeping with local policing, but he is also an avid sportsman in all seasons and was looking forward to both playing and coaching as his schedule allowed.
