A new Corporal is in town and her name is Kat Thain.
Thain took over the position of Corporal of the Keremeos detachment on July 20.
She was on hand at the Seniors Centre annual general meeting to answer questions from the group about policing in the community.
Many questions revolved around 24 hour policing.
“This is a provincial detachment so we are funded by the province. We don’t qualify (for full time policing) here but we do have a set amount of hours where an officer is on-call and that’s not going to change,” she said to the group.
Thain said other new faces will be at the detachment as two vacant positions will hopefully soon be filled.
Officers from out of area have been helping to cover off at the Keremeos detachment to ensure coverage for the last several months.
She explained attrition due to retirement has left many detachments in the RCMP shorthanded.
An audience member suggested that Keremeos is last to receive resources in the province.
“Actually no it’s not,” Thain said. “The attrition rate is high across the country. We have a lot more people retiring than we do coming in. Ours is a little more visible than other communities.”
Thain explained other municipalities with larger tax bases pay extra into policing to ensure they have more officers on the ground.
She said calls this year to the Penticton detachment have surpassed 13,000 incidents compared to just 1,200 in Keremeos.
Thain said she’s enjoying her time in Keremeos and meeting local residents.
She plans to work closer with the Citizens on Patrol group in the coming months to improve communication.
She was last posted in Logan Lake as Corporal and has been a police officer for 17 years.
“I’m going to learn a lot here and I think there’s a lot of things that I’m going to be able to bring to the table,” she said.