Special police squad would track released sex predators

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By Vancouver Sun

Published: 11/24/2003

Vancouver, British Columbia police chief Jamie Graham wants to create a new 14-officer unit that would provide undercover surveillance on high-risk sexual predators -- especially those who target children -- after they are released from prison.
Graham hopes to launch the integrated sexual predator operations team, or ISPOT, early next year, but he will first have to get funding approved in the 2004 budget.
The proposed squad would be based on a trial project in which the RCMP and Lower Mainland police agencies formed a temporary region-wide team, from November 2002 to February 2003, to track the movements of sexual predators released from custody. Precise details were not available Monday, but Graham said the results were "amazing."
That trial project was launched following the release of a startling RCMP-municipal police study in April 2002 that detailed the results of a team of investigators who tailed 12 high-risk sex offenders for just 20 days: the officers caught seven of them committing new offences ranging from breach of probation to sexual assault and possession of child pornography.
Graham, who is head of the British Columbia Chiefs of Police Association, said his hope is that if Vancouver establishes a permanent unit, other agencies will get involved and the squad will eventually be operating region-wide.
Currently 124 offenders, who served time in federal prisons for sex crimes, are living in B.C. and being supervised by Corrections Canada.
That includes 49 in halfway houses. The number doesn't include inmates released from provincial jails.
When the joint RCMP-municipal police study was released in April 2002, RCMP Inspector Keith Davidson said he hoped the findings would result in six to 10 surveillance teams, with 10 officers each, operating across the Lower Mainland, at a cost of $10 million a year. That has not materialized.
Delta police Chief Jim Cessford, who was head of the B.C. Chiefs of Police Association at the time, said last Monday that many agencies loved the idea, but the problem was finding funding for the aggressive plan.
Delta participated in the pilot project in 2002/2003, and Cessford said his officers successfully identified sexual offenders who had breached parole conditions. But it was difficult, he said, to absorb the loss of a few officers to the project.
However, he added that police chiefs are now discussing in their regular meetings establishing a permanent, region-wide team.
In Delta, Cessford said he wouldn't have the money to launch his own sexual-predator surveillance team, but he has asked for additional resources in the 2004 budget to participate in several integrated Lower Mainland police units, which could potentially include such a team.
Police agencies in the Victoria area also launched a pilot surveillance project in 2002.
Parole officers worked closely with police during the ISPOT pilot project in 2002/2003 to help identify high-risk offenders in the community, said Tim Goodsell, associate area director of Corrections Canada's Lower Mainland parole office.
He said parole officers identified offenders deemed high-risk -- often because they refused treatment in prison -- and advised ISPOT, who then monitored whether they violated their parole conditions.
Corrections would support working with ISPOT, but Goodsell noted his office already meets regularly with police to discuss high-risk cases.
He rejected the argument that the surveillance could be unfair to offenders trying to put their lives back on track.
"If they don't do anything, then they don't have anything to fear," he said.

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