The City of Kamloops expects to have its Community Services Officers working around the clock by July.

The City got the wheels in motion when it approved an expansion of the CSO program from 16-hours to 24-hours a day in March 2021.

Council also approved the hiring of temporary security to support patrols downtown and in the Tranquille corridor until the Community Services Division was at full capacity.

The expansion of the CSO Program came about six months after the former bylaws department was restructured in 2020, a move that led to pushback from CUPE Local 900.

With those issues now resolved, Deputy CAO Byron McCorkell says work to expand CSO coverage in Kamloops is ongoing.

“We had to negotiate with the union to get the shifts available in our schedule. We’ve met on it, now we just need to go and finalize that and go back out to the staff and position people in the schedule so that we can move out,” McCorkell told Radio NL.

“We’ll fill in any vacancies that we have currently and we should be up and running fully.”

In May of last year, Kamloops City Council began the process to expand the role of the CSOs as part of the plan to have them recognized as peace officers – a move that Kamloops RCMP Superintendent Jeff Pelley is on board with.

“We should be able to have a tiered program that allows folks who are CSO’s to respond to dog calls, parking tickets…those kinds of things, all the way up to somebody who begins those police files and operates as a junior police [officer],” Councillor Katie Neustaeter said at the time.

“That would create a tremendous alleviation of stress on our RCMP.”

McCorkell notes the City is continuing to work to get Peace Officer status for its CSOs, though its not clear when – or if – that will happen.

A handful of Kamloops Councillors were in Victoria today, May 13, for a meeting with Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth and Attorney General Niki Sharma. They’ll be talking CSOs, as well as concerns about downloaded costs on the RCMP, as well as the long-standing issue of a community court.

McCorkell said it was “unfortunate” that the restructuring was not “perfect,” noting it was done so officers could better respond to issues like crime and social disorder.

“The whole CSO program has taken a bad rap because of this cloud in some of the conversations on the street,” McCorkell added. “What we were trying to do is take a position of a bylaw officer and give them the ability to provide services for the concerns that the community currently has.”

“It was some place we wanted to go three, four years ago, and that’s not to say the process [was flawed.] The process worked in that we got together with our union and we had some frank conversations and in the end, we’ve come out with an agreement on how to move forward and we’re very pleased with it.”

McCorkell also said the CSO department is getting upwards of 24,000 calls for service a year, three-times the roughly 7,000 calls that were going to the former bylaw department six years ago. The program was also well received by former Kamloops RCMP Superintendent, Syd Lecky, prior to his departure in late 2022.

“The CSO program is designed to create an officer who is capable of providing outreach, providing enforcement, providing support for folks on the street, and its working extremely well,” McCorkell said.

“Our folks are out there doing their jobs as best they can in very difficult circumstances. We’re very proud of them all.”