It has been a busy year for the South Okanagan RCMP detachment, and the officer in charge is proud of their accomplishments through community partnerships and looking forward to more.
Supt. Beth McAndie took over the chief role in the detachment in late 2023. This year was her second year, and she reflected with her team about some of the highlights.
She said getting provincial support units, like auto theft units, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, and continued support pairing trained mental health professional nurses with police have all been wins.
“And working with our officers to create that sense of additional safety when we have community events and that additional officer presence,” McAndie said. “Our officers are showing up at their best every day.”
That, she added, is despite the personal stresses faced by police officers, both on the job and personally. She praised her officers’ resiliency and dedication.
“At the beginning of the year, we had some pretty brazen shootings in the downtown core, Winnipeg Street area, and the response from the community was obviously demanding to figure out what’s going on,” McAndie said.
“It was important for us to have a really firm and aggressive response, and leveraging our partnerships of our Southeast District Emergency Response Ream and having them come to the community, the investigations that were led by our frontline teams and our proactive teams in our crime reduction unit. It was an all hands on deck approach to deal with that.”
McAndie said the Repeat Violent Offending Intervention Initiative, or ReVOII, has been a trend in the right direction.
“[It] does play an impact for our community when we have our ReVOII clients that remain in custody because of that all hands on deck approach to dealing with them,” McAndie said.
“We forecasted potential impacts for some of these people we believe responsible for the shootings, and we thought, okay, when they’re released, we’re going to see the impact on a community, and we were right, but then being able to quickly deal with them and seeing them get back in custody and know that that program works was hopeful for us that we’re trending in the right direction.”
As well, every month, they review data and strategically deploy teams to deal with individuals they note are driving up property crime, auto theft, lower-level drug trafficking, as part of a repeat offender management program locally.
McAndie said it has been wraparound services and support from all angles of RCMP that has proven effective. Crime stats are down 19 per cent on a five year average, she said.
“I’m really proud of that work, and it’s because everybody has leaned into being aggressive with proactive policing,” she said.
“[The city’s investment in new members] is paying off, and we’re seeing the numbers.”
The Integrated Crisis Response Team, pairing nurses with police on mental health calls, continues to be a point of pride for the force.
“The relationship I have with Interior Health, I cherish that, and that ability to express our concerns and have a really open and honest dialogue that’s monthly. And then the boots on the ground relationship with our nurses here, being able to share their knowledge and experience with our officers and helping us to engage with those people who maybe are not necessarily needing to go to the hospital for an evaluation, but how we interact with them and support them,” McAndie said.
“That information sharing is key in levelling up how we support those people.”
The detachment has also been trying to be more proactive in sharing on social media and through press releases, keeping the public informed of their work and sharing public safety messaging.
Coming up in 2026, new community safety unit positions will be filled, with the goal of enhancing engagement with at-risk youth and also deal with specific issues like property crime.
“So hopefully they’re going to be able to liaise with our business associations, establish better communications and sharing and teaching,” McAndie said.
Also, McAndie is looking forward to a focus on traffic safety, since that has been a consistent point of feedback from the public.
In November, all of the detachment officers were trained in e-ticketing.
“The importance of e-ticketing is it’s much done much more quickly with less error, and it goes straight to the motor vehicle branch instead of us having to submit them,” McAndie said.
There has also been investment in traffic law enforcement equipment, which will be deployed at high traffic incident areas.
“We will be using data to really inform our more strategic enforcement [this year],” McAndie said.
Officers will be sent where the data shows high volumes of accidents and speeding complaints, to get that under control.
Another change in 2026 will be a dedicated intimate partner violence coordinator in the detachment.
“This position will have a strong focus on our initial response to those who have reached out for support, the quality of our investigations, compliance with provincial policing standards and policy around domestic violence, making sure they’re connected with police and community based victim services, and just making sure that we’re monitoring these highest risk investigations,” McAndie said.
“We’ve seen an upward trend in that, and we need to be bring public awareness to that. Whether people are a victim of it, whether witnessing it, or there’s concerns for children in the home that are being exposed to this type of violence, it takes courage to come forward, and we just want to make sure that we are supporting those people when they have that courage to come forward and report it.”
Overall, the takeaways from 2025 and plans for the future was the power of partnership, and not just within law enforcement or emergency services branches.
“It”s great to connect with community. The partnership that we have with the school district, MCFD [Ministry of Children and Family Development], Interior Health, the Penticton Indian Band, those are valuable, valuable partnerships, and we hold them dear to us, and we want to continue to work on those in 2026,” McAndie said.
And since there are a lot of new faces at the detachment, McAndie encourages folks to say hi while out in the community, and if they need help, don’t hesitate to call.
“We are doing our very best, and they we should encourage them to reach out if there’s something that’s just not sitting right with them, we want to hear about it, and we also want to hear when our officers are delivering at a great, high standard, and if we need to do some work to do we obviously want to hear about it as well,” she said.
“It takes us all to create that sense of safety and people have to be willing to commit to putting themselves out there to be a part of the solution … that’s what I would encourage the public to do in 2026 to to feel confident picking up the phone and reaching out to us [or city bylaw] and reporting incidents that are suspicious.”
