The introduction of the Mounties would make policing more efficient, boost national security and save the provincial government more than $ 1 million, he said. The police themselves, he insisted, had no reason to worry – they would end up with better training, better pay and better pensions with the RCMP. A newspaper columnist said it was the “best, most decisive” defense of a government plan to date by Wismer. But many, including the police themselves, were still puzzled when the BC provincial police. closed suddenly in August. More than 70 years later, the question of who is best suited for the BC police force reappeared in the legislature on Thursday. An MLA committee had agreed, unanimously on all party lines, that the province should abandon the RCMP and re-establish a provincial police force. BC Attorney General Gordon Wismer, right, depicted around 1940. Wismer introduced the bill that would later close the BC Provincial Police. in 1950. (Vancouver City Archives)

Decision to switch to RCMP

The BC Provincial Police (BCPP), formed in Fort Langley in 1858 to police the new British Columbia colony, had more than 520 officers in 123 police stations across the province when it was disbanded at midnight on 15 August 1950. The change did not go well at all. At least 11 officers resigned, instead of moving to the RCMP. Dozens of municipalities from Vancouver Island to the Kootenays who felt excluded from the negotiations wrote scathing letters to the MLA about their “secrecy”. In a newspaper article, readers called for “common courtesy” of a better explanation for the decision. “[The province had] “Not a single yoke of orders from voters to deliver the bill the way it was, without discussing the full pros and cons in the legislature,” the letter to the Times Colonist read. “It’s unbelievable that all this disappears overnight without any sanction from the people of British Columbia with the force of a general bill overwhelmed by an overly credible legislature.” Don N. Brown, a World War II veteran who spent three years with the BCPP before its dissolution, was determined to find out why the province had shut down. He was among the officers transferred to the RCMP and retired as supervisor after 27 years. In his book, published in 2000, Brown outlined a number of theories he had researched: the county mistakenly believed that the RCMP would be cheaper, politicians worried that the BCPP would be unionized, the force would lose members of the military or the federal government wanted police BC to help stop communism. Brown did not buy any of them. BC Provincial Police Officer WB Stewart receives the King Vancouver Police Medal for Peacefulness in 1946. (Vancouver City Archives)
“Despite the excuses… there is absolutely no real reason to dismantle a police force recognized by all as courageous, compassionate and experienced in policing not only the rugged wilderness of British Columbia, but also a recognized police force in the police force. urban areas, “wrote Brown, who died in 2009. In his last pages, Brown recommended to BC. to restart a provincial police force. “I think it would be impossible to rebuild a provincial police force similar in nature to the one that was destroyed in 1950. It is a different world than it was then,” Brown wrote. “[But] that would be ideal. “ Members of the provincial police BC Henry Avison, Deputy Inspector. TWS Parsons and Chief Const. A. McNeill in South Fort George, near Prince George, BC, 1918. (City of Vancouver Archives)
Since then, every few years, politicians have spoken out to say the same thing – but each time, the debate has disappeared. Wally Oppal, a former judge and attorney general of the PK Supreme Court, has advocated the idea of ​​a single police service across the county since the mid-1990s. Whether BC stays in the RCMP or returns to a provincial policing model, he said, public confidence in the process and the product will be key if reform is to succeed in the modern era. “Police services, or any other type of service, will have any kind of credibility, there has to be some kind of local accountability,” Oppal said on Thursday. “The days of high-ranking governments without any involvement from the local community, and especially the indigenous communities, are really over.”