No one likes being told how to do their job but the North Vancouver RCMP are willing to make an exception.
The detachment has launched an online survey aimed at finding out what North Vancouver residents think should be the constabulary’s top (or bottom) priorities.
“It guides our detachment and assists us in making decisions about where and how to use resources to best serve the needs of our communities,” said Cpl. Richard De Jong, said North Vancouver RCMP spokesman.
The survey, which is totally anonymous, asks residents to answer 13 brief questions about their perceptions of public safety and crime rates over the last three years, how well the detachment is doing and asks for suggestions on what it could be doing better.
The RCMP will then cross-reference any information they receive with statistics compiled by the detachment’s two crime analysts. When the detachment last did the survey in 2012, they found a spike in complaints about property crimes and vagrancy coming in to Lower Lonsdale via the SeaBus.
“From there, we struck up our LoLo foot patrol operation which runs about six months of the year where there’s designated patrols, strictly on foot, uniformed members and we’ve seen a marked decrease in vagrancy and panhandling and increased relationships with businesses,” De Jong said.
Traffic enforcement and speeding are also frequently hot issues, he added.
The survey can be accessed at http://fluidsurveys.com/s/NV-RCMP-Survey/ or through the front page of the North Vancouver RCMP detachment website. It will remain online until Oct. 16. The survey can be taken in English, French or Farsi.
