GRAND BANK, N.L. — Grand Bank Mayor Rex Matthews says he is saddened by what he ses as the further deterioration of policing on the Burin Peninsula with the impending elimination of the RCMP’s detachment in the community.
Matthews says the RCMP is planning to divest of its building in Grand Bank and will also sell several houses it owns in the town, keeping one of them for office space.
“We’ve been given notice that it is going to happen,” he told The Telegram Thursday.
Matthews suggested there has been a significant falloff in services the RCMP is providing to the Grand Bank-Fortune area.
“We’ve had numerous meetings with them over the last couple of years and it all comes down to the human resources, and the human resources depends on the financial picture, and they’re telling us they just don’t have the money to keep the staffing levels like they were and they have to make all these adjustments, which is bad news for towns like Grand Bank and Fortune,” Matthews said.
“It’s very bad news because you hardly see the presence of the RCMP anymore.”
Matthews said just one police officer lives in Grand Bank and that individual is due to be transferred this year. Once that person is gone, the mayor said his understanding is the RCMP will no longer station any officers in the town.
“We used to have four and five officers here all the time, full time, permanent, and as of 2021, no, we won’t (have any),” he said.
The RCMP’s main detachment on the Burin Peninsula is located in Marystown.
There was another satellite detachment office in St. Lawrence until it was closed in the mid-1990s. The RCMP stationed a patrol vessel, the Murray, on the Burin Peninsula for many years — using it chiefly for custom-related operations and patrols between Newfoundland and the French islands of St-Pierre-Miquelon — until it was relocated in 2015. The RCMP also shut its federal serious and organized crime office in Burin three years ago, reallocating the officers.
Fortune Mayor Charles Penwell said he is concerned about downgrading of services, as well.
“If they were closing the building but enhancing the service of the Grand Bank-Fortune area, then you could see some logic behind it, but there’s no enhancing of service,” Penwell said Thursday.
Given the large geographical area of the Burin Peninsula, without more resources, policing services will continue to decline, Matthews said.
“It’s not a good situation and maybe the provincial government is going to have to look at a different method of policing on the Burin Peninsula,” he said.
“We can’t keep going like we’re doing. I mean, no money coming in, no money coming in, next thing we’re going to have four or five people in Marystown to (patrol) the whole peninsula.”
Paul Herridge covers reports on the Burin Peninsula. [email protected]
