Single-source stories and RCMP responses
On Friday, the Prince George Citizen published a story titled “Swim team coach stunned by lack of police response to Prince George Aquatic Centre incident”. It was a single-sourced story in which the subject of the story told the reporter that he had repeatedly called police for help dealing with someone lighting fires and received no response:
Repeated calls to the RCMP failed to result in a police officer visiting the scene.
“The lifeguard told me they phoned many many times and finally the dispatcher told them that this was not a life-threatening situation, so please don’t phone,” he said.
Partyka was stunned by the lack of police response to the incident.
“After that, he went into the changeroom and started smoking pot,“ said Partyka. “How do we protect our children from something like that, when police tell you this is not a life-threatening situation. I’m speechless. This is happening everywhere, every day.”
The story went on for another several hundred words, with Partyka using it as a launching point to blame the provincial NDP and federal Liberals for the fact that police wouldn’t respond. Except yesterday, the Prince George RCMP put out a release indicating that they had, in fact, attended and the real issue was this guy kept calling 911 for a non-emergency. In a release sent out to media yesterday, Cpl. Jennifer Cooper writes:
On Thursday, April 25, 2024, shortly after 3:30 p.m., Prince George RCMP responded to a complaint of a person setting fires outside the Aquatic Centre at 1770 George Paul Lane. Over the next several hours, reports were made of the man moving into the Aquatic Centre and allegedly consuming drugs inside the facility.
Concerns have been raised in relation to this investigation about the caller being advised to stop phoning 9-1-1 as this was not a life-or-death situation. A review of the phone calls made by Aquatic Centre staff revealed that the caller was advised to not use the 9-1-1 emergency line but to instead continue using the non-emergency line for this situation, which is in-line with the Operations Control Centre policy. There are a small number of 9-1-1 emergency phone lines available for the entire
Northern B.C. region and it is standard practice to keep those phone lines open for priority life-or-death calls. In this instance, the caller was immediately able to call back on a non-emergency line where they continued to give updates to the 9-1-1 dispatcher, who provided them in real-time to the attending police officer.
“We have seen the comments being made in the media and want the public to know that we are not unsympathetic to the frustrations and concerns this situation has elicited,” states Cpl. Jennifer Cooper, Media Relations Officer for the Prince George RCMP. “Our police officers attended this location twice in a two-hour time span to respond to the complaints made about the person loitering inside and outside the facility. In between these particular calls for service, the same police officer responded to two separate reports of assaults-in-progress, while the other on-duty police officers were similarly busy.”
Prince George RCMP and our 9-1-1 Police Dispatchers are passionate about serving your community and are committed to public safety. If you need to report a crime, please contact your local police. For emergencies, please call 9-1-1.
For those of you not in the news game, a single-source story is one that relies on only one person’s account of a situation to say what happened. In this case, the Citizen only had Partyka’s version of events — while the city was contacted, they directed response to RCMP and RCMP did not respond for several days. As a news organization, you then have a choice — do you hold the story until the other party responds, or do you go ahead and publish without their version of events? It’s a choice that has to weigh a number of options with no “correct” answer but if you do decide to move forward with a story before hearing the other side, you can wind up in this sort of situation — where you later find out that some crucial information, like the fact a cop did respond, that would have changed the framing of the original. It’s debatable whether a headline like “Lack of police response” would be entirely accurate to describe a story in which police did, in fact, respond. I will also point out that, crucially, we still don’t know when police responded or what exactly that response was — was the guy arrested or told to move along? Did he go into the pool before or after the police came by, and what happened then?
Stories about crimes are often single source, by the way — especially if that source is the RCMP themselves. You’ll frequently see stories published that rely entirely on the police version of events, with no outside sources or witnesses. This is something that has been true for years and will be increasingly true as news orgs become smaller and smaller, combined with the fact there are no longer police scanner channels the public can listen to, which I’ve written about before.
Again, there is not one correct response — some news orgs subscribe to the “let ‘er rip” version of things, where they just put out stories and interviews, attributing it to whoever, and then if they hear something else, they’ll put that up, too. Others go slower or more cautiously, which results in less he-said/she-said style stories or series of stories but may also result in fewer stories overall. It’s up to each one to decide how to proceed, and readers to decide which type of reporting they value more.
Parking as a measure of downtown health
wrote a
Vehicles (and parking occupancy) are a poor metric for the vitality of downtown, in general, but especially on the busiest night of the week.
In my ideal world, we would measure our downtown’s “success” and “good vibes” based ENTIRELY on the amount of people we see walking between things to do (restaurants, entertainment, shopping, etc) and not the amount of cars we see looking for parking.
I 100% agree that spreading a “no one goes downtown” attitude is poor, problematic, and often incorrect BUT the more positive counter narrative “downtown is doin’ pretty good actually” has some hazardous orange flag consequences as well.
A conclusion here is not that we need more street parking but rather we need A) better parking solutions (that are not on the street) and more importantly, B) better systems for folks to get downtown and move around downtown (transit, protected bike infrastructure, etc).
I don’t disagree with any of this! I just use the parking thing as a short-hand to counter the notion that people don’t go downtown. Here’s another data point: On a weekday night last week, me and some friends decided to go for dinner and were faced with a 40-minute wait at both Nancy-O’s and Betulla Burning, and only just managed to get a recently vacated table at Crossroads. That this is not unusual, in my experience, strikes me as a strong metric in favour of my more ongoing point that people will and do go downtown for the businesses that offer something they want — in these cases, high-quality dining experiences.
This is also me repeating a previous newsletter that I can’t find and therefore won’t link to but what I think we have here is essentially two downtowns: One that is doing better than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime, and one that is doing as bad or worse. The version of the downtown that is doing better than I’ve ever seen is essentially two main points: 5th and George, where CrossRoads/The Keg/Black Clover are, and the block of 3rd and 4th Ave. that contain Nancy-O’s, Betulla Burning, Homework Ivy’s Family Kitchen and the various speciality shops on 4th. Other bright spots include Ritual Coffee/Daydream Donuts/3 Goblins Games on George and, when they are operational, the Farmer’s Market and the various live music venues in the area.
The problem, as identified by Darrin, is that these spots are not necessarily all linked by similar vibrancy. I, personally, have not encountered any issues walking between 3rd Ave. and George St. at night but that is my personal experience and I certainly understand why people less familiar with the area may not feel comfortable making that trek — you do go past several blocks of closed businesses with maybe one or two other people in sight. While strangers aren’t always a danger and crowds aren’t always a guarantee of safety, on balance having a greater number of people coming and going, with more publicly staffed spots to pop into does create a greater feeling of security and vibrancy. Downtown Prince George has had this feeling on occassion — most notably when events like Coldsnap and Alefest coincide, or during the 2015 Winter Games — but overall you are going from one bright spot to another, with dead zones separating them.
My general belief is that any realistic conversation about how we get to that sense of vibrancy applying to the entirety (or at least a greater) portion of downtown at all (or at least more) times needs to engage with both realities. The starting point of “downtown is a warzone, it’s completely unsafe and no one wants to go there” (which is not one Darrin has but one that I have seen expressed) is, to be frank, useless. There may be issues, but if you are unable to acknowledge that there are several hundred people going downtown regularly by choice both during banker’s hours and afterward, I’m not sure you’ll have a realistic sense of the building blocks available to further improve things further. People do want to downtown and they are going downtown, we just need to figure out how to make it easier and even more attractive for them to do it more frequently, and other people to join them.
News roundup:
Long-term care model coming to Prince George using “resident centred” approach to care.
Construction to start on paved trails at Otway Nordic Centre this summer.
“This team deserves it,”: PG Cougar fans filling up local bars during playoff run.
Prince George Friendship Centre’s Barb Ward-Burkitt awarded 5-millionth moose hide pin for her work.
PG Kodiaks U16 girls volleyball eyeing another provincial crown.
CHSS student finished top 1% in international essay contest.
Release your inner geek in PG this weekend at Northern FanCon.
Today’s song — It’s gonna be May.
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Send feedback by emailing northerncapitalnews@gmail.com. Find me online at akurjata.ca.
I have been going to Steve & Sons for work on my shoes recently. The location (3rd and George) might be thought of as one of the "worst" in downtown. But it is much the same, safety-wise as it was years ago, when I worked at the Native Health Centre. Less fun because no more Pastry Chef, but not at all dangerous. Carolyn McGhee
you just need to read the comments section of the Citizen to know that asking reasonable questions about what is NOT known, and providing some nuanced thought, is not welcome. As you wrote, Andrew, reading the follow up on the Aquatic Centre story still leaves a lot of questions to be answered. Being the gal who really likes to know ALL the details, I tried not to judge to strongly and often end in my mind with "the objective truth lies somewhere in the middle, probably". It often feels like not taking a side, and being able to acknowledge that more than one thing can be true in a situation makes one an outcast these days. *sigh*
Also, I would pay to watch "The Darrin and Andrew verbal smackdown", throwing zingers at each other like "thou uncouth, big bloused cad!" on a downtown corner one Friday evening. With a cool drink and maybe one of those soft pretzels from Crossroads, of course, and all in good fun.