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North Shore residents don't want provincial police force, poll finds

How would you feel about having a BC Provincial Police force?
Brent Richter
Brent Richter
Police Tape -Horz
A majority of North Shore residents polled would prefer to keep the RCMP.Mike Wakefield, North Shore News files

The province is considering a proposal to replace B.C.'s RCMP detachments with a provincial police force. But the majority of North Shore residents polled aren't keen on the idea.

The North Shore News polled 1,494 readers and asked the question: What do you think of the proposal to replace the RCMP with a provincial police force?

The poll ran from May 2 to 15. Of the 1,494 votes, we can determine that 640 are from within the community. The full results are as follows:

I like it. We need policing reform and this is the best way to do it. 14.06 % local, 17.34 % total    
I don't like it. We are currently well served by the RCMP and municipal forces. 51.25 % local, 49.53 % total    
I am open to it but I don't know enough about how things will change. 34.69 % local, 33.13 % total    
  Local   Total

There are currently 130 RCMP detachments that provide policing in B.C. An all-party legislative committee in Victoria came up with the recommendation after studying ways to reform policing to address systemic racism, create more diversity, strengthen Indigenous rights and improve the training and education of police officers.

Results are based on an online study of adult North Shore News readers that are located in North Vancouver and West Vancouver. The margin of error - which measures sample variability - is +/- 2.53%, 19 times out of 20.

The North Shore News uses a variety of techniques to capture data, detect and prevent fraudulent votes, detect and prevent robots, and filter out non-local and duplicate votes.