British Columbia Provincial Police

The British Columbia Provincial Police (BCPP) was the policing body for the Canadian province of British Columbia until 1950. The force is usually dated from the appointment of Chartres Brew as Chief Constable of the province and Chief Inspector of Police for the new mainland colony in 1858. Brew had served with Royal Irish Constabulary in County Cork, Ireland, before being sent to British Columbia to assist in stabilizing the situation there, beset as it was by well-armed Americans in the goldfields and the accompanying risk of annexation. At the time of his appointment, there was only one appointed constable in the northern part of the colony, theoretically patrolling 360,000 square miles by himself.

The other component of the provincial constabulary was their equivalent in the Colony of Vancouver Island, where a police force of one sort or another had operated since the formation of the Island colony in 1849. Originally this force was composed of West Indians recruited by Governor Douglas, himself a mulatto from Guyana, and wore colourful outfits more like a military-dress parade uniform than conventional police clothing. This force had to be disbanded during the onset of the Fraser Gold Rush when Victoria was mobbed by thousands of Americans unwilling to submit to policing by a non-white police force (their replacement force was composed of Britons). In 1866 the police forces of the two colonies were amalgamated, as were the colonies, and in 1871 this new body was given the name British Columbia Provincial Police.

Police were engaged from within local communities, as per Brew's original policy on this matter, based on his experience in Ireland, and until 1923 they were plainclothes and had no uniform. By 1910 the force roster numbered 186 men. In 1923 the force was reorganized and issued frontier-style khaki uniforms with green piping, flat-brimmed stetson hats, and Sam Browne Belts, and a system of semimilitary ranks was established. A training school was established for the first time, and a mounted troop, while the force's administration divided the province into divisions to better serve its geographically-isolated regions.

Before its Criminal Investigation Department was established in the 1920s, the BCPP contracted private detective agencies for criminal investigations and for surveillance of suspected radicals, and was Pinkerton's biggest Canadian client. Nevertheless, over a short period of time, it became one of the most modern police agencies in the Canadian west.

The history of the force boasts a number of firsts:
*the first inter-city radio telegraph system in North America. This system was fully integrated with radio-equipped cars and coastal patrol vessels. High-frequency radios were designed and built in the police work shops.
*The force became the first law-enforcement agency to develop an air arm crime laboratories, and sophisticated sections for fingerprints, firearm and ballistics, and identification
*highway patrols and investigation divisions.

In the 1930s the BCPP began to contract to municipalities for policing services, a practice now assumed by the successor force, the RCMP. During World War II the BCPP organized recruitment for the armed forces.

Their general duties enforced fishing and hunting licenses, providing customs and excise functions, livestock brand inspections, managed trap-line permits and dog licenses, Vital Statistics and served civil court documents. They also functioned as Court prosecutors, jailers and prisoner escort and during the labour troubles in Vancouver during the Great Depression helped enforce martial law against strikers on Vancouver's troubled docks and evict protestors from the city's main Post Office. During this period, horses for the mounted squad were relocated from Vancouver Island to the Oakalla prison farm in Burnaby.

At the time of its dissolution on 15 August 1950, the force consisted of 520 men and their budget was $2,250,000. The 492 members who stayed on were taken on as part of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's "E" Division, which has had the contract for provincial policing in BC ever since.

Further Reading

Lynne Stonier-Newman, "Policing a Pioneer Province: The BC Provincial Police, 1858-1950", Harbour Publishing, 1991. ISBN 1-55017-056-2

External links

* [http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/202/300/inditer/2000/10-10/bcpolice/bcp.htm British Columbia Justice Over 92 Years A Short History] (BCPP Veterans Assn website)]