VOTE JOHN DACOMBE FOR COURTENAY COUNCIL

Crime and anti-social behaviour

A successful democracy depends on rule of law, with everyone – rich, poor, middle class – held personally accountable for their actions. But getting to that place requires a multi-pronged approach, which includes education, prevention, treatment, and enforcement.
That doesn’t mean more police, because police are expensive (well over $300k per position), unavailable due to RCMP staffing shortages, and using police to enforce non-criminal but still anti-social behaviour is ineffective and costly.

There are more cost-effective ways for us to create a safer, more socially and economically vibrant community.

These solutions include:
1. Bylaw enforcement: I will introduce a motion in the first 100 days to scrap the City’s bylaw enforcement policy and replace it with one that issues actual fines, not warning after warning. Whether someone is parked on the sidewalk so our kids have to walk to school in dangerous traffic, smoking illicit drugs in a playground, parked in a handicapped spot so a person with disabilities cannot use it, or violating water restrictions in a severe drought, they’ll be held accountable.
2. Increased support for the Mobile integrated Crisis Response team, and strong advocacy to higher levels of government for improved provincial mental health, addiction, and housing supports, including treatment beds right here in the CV - but with effective management and strong enforcement of rules.

3. Improved nuisance and property standards bylaws: abandoned properties, hoarders, slumlords and drug houses are crime vectors and must be targeted, far sooner, by much larger fines.

4. More red light and speed cameras, especially in and near school zones, because motor vehicles are one of the top three causes of death among young British Columbians.

100% of the revenue from traffic offences goes to local policing, so this will ensure irresponsible drivers pay their fair share.
5. Hidden trail cams: big fines and public naming and shaming will mitigate the number of incidents of individuals despoiling our environment. (To clarify, I support specifically targeting only a very small number of high dumping locations in order to comply with provincial legislation. This is not about mass surveillance of parks and roads, which is prohibited in BC.)

How is enforcing bylaws going to reduce crime?

Because “quality-of-life policing” works. (And doesn't actually need police. It just needs enforcement.)

Targeting lesser offences creates a culture of lawfulness. Conversely, a culture of impunity where lesser offences are allowed leads to lawlessness

And it’s no surprise that individuals who don’t believe the Criminal Code should apply to them also don’t believe bylaws, the Motor Vehicle Act, or any other societal rules apply to them.

Do you support Braidwood?

Yes, in principle – but only if strong management and the strict enforcement of laws and bylaws, both onsite and in the surrounding neighbourhood, are central to its operation. And I do have serious reservations about colocating recovering addicts, active addicts, and vulnerable women and seniors.

But let’s be clear. I do support advocating to the province to keep active addicts at a distance from those other groups, but this is a provincially purchased and will be a provincially built facility. Apart from the City rezoning this property (done in 2024), the City has no legal power over this site. Municipalities have no power to deny the province, a higher level of government, this action. Recent success in Nanaimo to make a facility "dry" succeeded in part because there was another facility to move active addicts to. We do not have that option in the CV, so we cannot assume we will have the same success in advocacy here.

Do you support a safe consumption site?

Yes, but again, the strict enforcement of laws and bylaws in the surrounding neighbourhood is essential. If we want to keep open drug use off our streets, we need to offer addicts a place to use, because addiction will always be with us.

Does your change in bylaw enforcement policy target the homeless?

No. Only a small minority of Bylaw calls for service (18% in 2025) are related to homeless encampments, and ticketing those with no income or assets is pointless.

Everyone needs to be held accountable for their actions, but in some cases the most appropriate action will not be financial.