Some of our image-laden pages may load more slowly depending on your internet service. Patience if they don't display immediately. You'll be glad you waited.

South Okanagan Photos

RCMP clarifies results of recent audit of sex assault files

From ODN
Very difficult to make a story out of dry stats
The Kelowna RCMP and National office not admitting any wrong doing and maybe some administrative mistakes in classifying of complaints.
Will see what other media say.
***
From RCMP in Kelowna
Good afternoon Jack,
I agree that statistical imputing errors don’t make terribly interesting stories, but I disagree with the rest of your statement.
The majority of the issue was scoring error and we’ve taken training steps to ensure this doesn’t happen in the future.
We are always striving to provide better service to our communities and since this review there have been numerous changes to our detachment:
  1. we have given additional training to our staff who deal with records to ensure that these scoring issues don’t resurface.
  2. we have reopened 12 of these files to investigate further avenues
  3. we have moved our Child Abuse Unit to the Child Advocacy Centre where we can work more closely with our local partners and create a supportive environment for victimized children and their families
  4. we have started a 4 person Sexual Assault unit to support, guide and monitor our officers during these investigations
  5. we have begun mandatory training for all Kelowna officers on trauma, sexual assault investigations, and bias to ensure we properly and thoroughly investigate all sexual assaults that are reported to us.
  6. we have created an 8 member GIST unit that is embedded in our watches to mentor our front line officers and monitor and guide larger investigations.
We hold ourselves accountable to our communities and are committed to ensuring that survivors of sexual assault feel comfortable bringing their allegations to the RCMP, and that they will receive the same standard of care regardless of jurisdiction. We want them to trust that our investigators will be thorough and professional as they investigate each crime.
Cpl Jocelyn Noseworthy
***

Following reports that identified Kelowna as having a high number of unfounded sexual assault files compared to the provincial average, the RCMP National Headquarters Sexual Assault Review Team (SART) reviewed Kelowna sexual assault files from 2018 and 2019.

The SART reviewed 30 files from 2018, and 36 files from 2019 files to ensure they were complete, accurately documented and appropriately classified within the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) survey. Uniform Crime Reporting is the system used by all police in Canada to record the type of reported criminal offence, whether the reported crime is founded or unfounded, and if the reported crime has been concluded. This information is then shared with Statistics Canada through the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey to track crime statistics in Canada.

The SART has completed the review and shared the results and recommendations with Kelowna detachment and the BC RCMP.

The results
2018 file review:

  • 13 files remain unfounded
  • 12 files were incorrectly scored
  • 5 files were recommended for further investigation.

2019 file review:

  • 12 files remain unfounded
  • 17 file were incorrectly scored
  • 7 files were recommended for further investigation.

The use of the wrong UCR codes was the most common issue identified during the review. Based on the SART review and the correction in the classification of files Kelowna’s unfounded sexual assault rate is fact in line with the provincial average.