Legal fear caused the previous version of BarWatch to come to a sudden halt in Prince George. The program was initiated here in 2008 by RCMP Staff Sgt. Jeff MacArthur and a team of Mounties who, with the permission of bar owners on a place by place basis, would scope out night clubs for troublemakers and eject them before any violence could occur.
"It wasn't supported by RCMP senior management in B.C., and that was out of legal concern that we had no authority and potentially could be violating people's rights, so we discontinued the program," said Prince George RCMP spokesman Cpl. Craig Douglass.
However, several other municipalities (including those policed by RCMP) have had BarWatch or similarly named programs running without legal challenge for years. Why, asked the bar owners and some in the public, should Prince George not follow suit?
Prince George was the first jurisdiction in the province, said Douglass, went at the BarWatch idea in reverse. That is, here, the program was led by the police.
"Police do not run a BarWatch program or anything like it anywhere in the province. We act on the requests of the public. It is a community-generated program, not a police-generated program.
This program has to be established by business owners and other community partners and the police then are invited to take part. We are aware that there is research going on, and we are definitely doing a lot of that research ourselves, into what the correct model for that would look like, but we will only act if we are invited to do so by the public."
If bar owners and restaurateurs are waiting for a call from the police to get BarWatch organized, the phone probably is never going to ring, Douglass said, it has to be them to get together and pick up the phone.
Chilliwack is one of the RCMP-policed cities that has a BarWatch program underway. A spokesperson at their municipality told The Citizen that is exactly how their version of the initiative operates.
"It is run by the establishments and it is in partnership with the RCMP," said the source, who would not be named. "Other partners are the Liquor Control and Licensing Branch, ICBC, Fraser Health, we have had MADD Canada and fire inspectors take part as well. But it is licensee-driven. There are about 10 signed on right now. They have signed authorization for the RCMP to come in."
There was no expected timeline as to when a Prince George program might re-start, but contacts at City Hall, the RCMP, and among bar owners indicated it is expected soon, but no one is in a rush that would compromise the legal quality of the program.
