The South Okanagan has been hit by a highly unusual crime and vandalism spree over the last 2 months. Numerous wineries, businesses and residences have been broken into and hundreds of thousands of dollars of possessions have been stolen by these criminals. Damage to the buildings that they have been breaking into has been extensive. Most of these thefts have taken place between 1 am and 7 am in the morning when these facilities are unattended. These professional crooks have been taking advantage of a weakness in the local RCMP police presence in that only one officer is on assignment during these hours. Thus they have been able to break into these facilities, steal what they want to steal, and then disappear long before the RCMP show up. The RCMP in the Oliver detachment have told us that they are under-resourced to handle this effectively and they do not have the budget to hire additional staff to deal with this matter.

The Mayor of Oliver (Ron Hovanes) the regional MLA (Linda Larson) and our Area C elected representative (Terry Schafer) have all indicated that the local business and residential community need to lobby the one person in this province who is capable of making some change, and that is the BC Attorney General, Suzanne Anton, QC.. We are thus asking the Attorney General to allocate the resources required to the South Okanagan so that the RCMP and catch these criminals.