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MODEL BEHAVIOUR: Jeff Demianiuk, one of the founders of the Milner Park Flying Club, shows off his Messerschmitt Me 262 model plane.The small electric powered plane, modeled after the German WWII jet-powered fighter aircraft, can fly up to 100 mph. Demianik and about 20 other members of the flying club meet at Milner Park every sunny day to fly their model planes.
No need for regional force, says Cooke DAN FERGUSON Times Reporter
There is no need for a regional police force in the Lower Mainland because one already exists, in the form of the integrated police units operated by RCMP and municipal police forces. That was the message of Supt. Derek Cooke, the officer in charge of the Langley RCMP detachment and his boss, assistant RCMP commissioner Norm Lipinski, who commands Metro Vancouver’s various Mountie detachments. Township councillors invited the RCMP to appear before council on Monday, March 4 to comment on the call for a regional police force in Metro Vancou-
ver that was made by Missing Women Inquiry commissioner Wally Oppal in December of last year. In a 1,450-page, four-volume report titled Forsaken, Oppal called on the province to create a Greater Vancouver police force after concluding a fractured, badly co-ordinated police response let serial killer Robert Pickton continue operating for years after he should have been caught. Cooke opened his presentation to council by asking councillors who supported the Oppal recommendation to raise their hands. No one did. Then Cooke went on to argue that, for all intents and purposes, there
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already exists a regional force, consisting of integrated teams of RCMP and municipal police officers who investigate murders, carry out crash reconstructions and forensic investigations, share Supt. Derek police dog teams and operate a joint Cooke Emergency Response Team (ERT) that tackles especially hazardous situations. “I kind of wonder why we’re having this discussion [about a regional force],”
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Cooke said. “We already have one.” Cooke said information sharing among the different RCMP detachments and police departments has substantially improved post-Pickton, with new technology that supplies near-instant alerts about criminal activity. He compared the Lower Mainland’s co-operative policing approach to other regional police forces in Ottawa, Los Angeles and New York City, where large urban areas are divided into individual precincts that look after local law enforcement, while regional forces pursue cross-boundary crime. continued, PAGE 6
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