The idea to merge the Shawnigan Lake and North Cowichan/Duncan RCMP detachments obviously came from someone who has never been here.
We cannot imagine anyone who has had to drive from Duncan to rural Shawnigan Lake or Mill Bay or the Malahat suggesting it’s sufficient to have just one detachment to serve such an enormous area.
It’s not only about physical geography. It’s also about traffic.
Can you imagine on a busy Friday in the summer, the police trying to make it from Duncan up the highway to Shawnigan in any kind of reasonable timeframe? It’s absurd, even with lights and sirens and assuming cooperative drivers.
This is a classic example of a far-off bureaucracy sticking their nose in where it doesn’t belong. Anyone from this area would be able to tell them it’s a terrible idea, but no, instead we have to wait for a study of some kind as they try to pinch pennies at the expense of our communities’ safety.
We can see how, if you’re just looking at a map, and armed with the information that both North Cowichan/Duncan and Shawnigan Lake need new detachment buildings, a merger might seem like something worth exploring. But even a cursory conversation with local politicians — or anyone, really — would have told them it was a non-starter from a practical point of view. Not to mention a public relations nightmare, as we cannot imagine anything the people of the Cowichan Valley want less.
Consider: if a police car has to be dispatched from Duncan area (which is where we presume a new detachment would be built) all the way out to a home in Mill Bay, where someone has reported an intruder in the house, that resident could well be dead before the RCMP could even arrive.
The foolishness of going ahead with an amalgamation of the police stations cannot be overstated.