By Shirley Bond
Minister of Justice and Attorney General

VICTORIA - The provincial government has committed to creating a 10-year strategic plan for policing - and we'd like to encourage you to have your say.

It's critical that people have confidence in our police, and that means working together to identify priorities and develop solutions for the challenges of the future. It also means developing the plan transparently, so you have a clear view of how your feedback is being incorporated and what other work is ongoing.

To do just that, we have now launched an interactive website: http://blog.gov.bc.ca/bcpolicingplan/ 
The site features a blog where we'll be hosting regular dialogue sessions around key themes like community safety, crime prevention and responding to gang violence. Crime in B.C. is at a 30-year historic low, but with new and emerging challenges for policing and community safety, it's important for us to get a deeper understanding of how your community is impacted by criminal activity and what local strategies might be useful throughout the province.

We want to know what will make you feel safer in your community, and what priorities you think the Province should focus on. We also want a comprehensive strategy to eliminate gangs and gun violence from our communities. Our dialogue sessions on the blog will look at all of these things so our policing plan addresses prevention, intervention and enforcement.

You can become part of the plan in many ways. The first dialogue session will be happening on Wednesday, May 23 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. We're also blogging about our progress as we work through other aspects of the project, like our regional stakeholder roundtables. We're using what we learn in the roundtables to determine common challenges across communities, and what kinds of broad questions we should be addressing with all British Columbians on the blog. I also want to encourage community members to hold discussion groups of their own, and send us a summary of their ideas and thoughts to: BCPolicingPlan@gov.bc.ca

Finally, you'll get to have your say on the actual plan itself. Once we have a draft of B.C.'s Policing Plan, we will be posting it to the website, so that the public has a chance to comment on it before it is implemented.
 
This process is part of our overall work to reform the justice sector and make it more accessible and responsive to British Columbians. We look forward to hearing your ideas so that we can be sure B.C.'s Policing Plan reflects our communities' common public safety priorities and contributes to a modernized, efficient criminal justice system.

Contact:   

Government Communications and Public Engagement
Ministry of Justice
250 356-6961