Wednesday, August 19, 2020

Authorized Police Strength by Municipality in the Lower Mainland

Yesterday, I posted some information about Langley City’s Community Crime Prevention Strategic Plan. In that post, I noted that Langley City has a high RCMP to resident ratio. I thought I would expand on that point.

Using information from Statistics Canada, BC Stats, and the Township of Langley, I created the following chart and table which shows the authorized police officer strength per 100,000 population in the Lower Mainland.

Authorized police officer strength per 100,000 in the Lower Mainland. Select chart to enlarge.
Population Authorized police officer strength Authorized police officer strength per 100,000 population
North Vancouver District 89,435 78 87.2
Kent 6,464 6 92.8
Richmond 209,838 223 106.3
Coquitlam 149,450 162 108.4
White Rock 20,873 23 110.2
Maple Ridge 90,630 101 111.4
Langley Township 128,999 144 111.6
Burnaby 248,071 277 111.7
Pitt Meadows 19,924 23 115.4
Port Coquitlam 62,626 73 116.6
North Vancouver City 57,021 67 117.5
Mission 41,860 51 121.8
Chilliwack 95,641 124 129.7
Surrey 568,158 773 136.1
Abbotsford 153,866 219 142.3
New Westminster 77,950 112 143.7
Port Moody 35,138 52 148
West Vancouver 46,643 79 169.4
Delta 109,674 190 173.2
Langley City 27,595 51 184.8
Hope 6,357 12 188.8
Vancouver 678,308 1,327 195.6

This information is from 2018 which is the most recent year that information is available from Statistics Canada. Information for Langley was combined in 2018, so I used information from the Township of Langley and BC Stats to break out the numbers.

Authorized police strength means the number of police officer positions allowed to be filled, whether they were filled or vacant.

2 comments:

Nathan Davidowicz said...

Many of these RCMP detachments are the same for two adjacent municipalities
like North Vancouver City and District; Ridge Meadows etc. so the figures are somewhat misleading.

Nathan Pachal said...

Each municipality contributes members to shared detachments based on a funding formula, so I think the numbers are accurate.